What is a solid state drive? This is a question that many a novice computer owner asks when they are shopping around for the latest ultra book or laptop nowadays. In a world filled with acronyms, adding another one just seems to want to make our lives a little complex. That being said, today the aim is to make your lives a little easier when you look to make that decision on what type of drive to get for your personal or business computer.
In essence, a solid state drive does the job of what conventional hard disk used to do, but instead of a matrix of moving parts, memory is stored in something called flash memory which in simple terms is a set of memory chips. It is that simple.
So, what is so special about this new type of solid state drive technology? It is the blazing fast read and write access times. Since there are no mechanical moving parts that are in between you getting your latest episode of Breaking Bad to start streaming on your computer screen, accessing that content that is stored on a micro chip is way faster and you will notice difference when you press play inside of Netflix.
Keep in mind however, that blazing fast read and write access speeds do come at a price, and it is literally that, price. Today the price of an SSD drive that is under 1TB roughly costs two to three times that of its hard disk drive counterpart, however, that gap is closing as the SSD market continues to mature and the technology improves and gets cheaper.
So, what about hard disk drives? Is there any place for them in our society? The answer to that question is a very resounding “yes”. Although hard disk drives do have a higher probability of failing when compared to their flash memory counterparts after a lot of use they do offer a lot more storage space for the buck.
You see, it depends on the use case when asking yourself which storage technology to use. I will do my best to provide what my personal opinion is on the answer to this question of “SSD or HDD”.
In short, if you need a computer where the applications need to be able to read and write data as fast as possible, for example, with video games, or multimedia presentations, then SSD drives would be better suited for you. On the other hand if you are looking for very large scale storage and archive technology where there are huge economies of scale, then hard disk drives are your best bet. HDD drives due have a higher probability of failing when compared to solid state drives but remember that this is a relative comparison. Due to advances in technology, HDD drives do tend to last longer and have better life cycles with time.
So there you go Ladies and Gentlemen. The question of what is a solid state drive has been answered I hope and I also have provided you with an explanation of the difference between SSD and HDD.
If you want to learn more about this topic then you will want to watch my YouTube video on this topic below where I also show you how you can upgrade your laptop from a HDD to an SSD drive. Speaking of SSD drives I also have a link to one on Amazon here for a 500GB SATA3 drive if you are interested. One more point to note is that if you also decide to do an upgrade yourself please ensure that you have research the model drive compatibility with your computer or laptop before embarking on such a project.