A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses the Solid-State Memory to store data. SSDs are different from the traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDD), which are basically electromechanical devices containing spinning disks which revolve over a spindle and movable read/write heads .
SSDs use microchips which retain data in non-volatile memory chips and contain no moving parts to read or write data just like a USB flash memory. Unlike traditional HDDs, SSDs are typically less susceptible to physical shock, and have lower access time. SSDs use the same hardware interface as the Hard Disk Drives, thus easily replacing them without changing the hardware architecture.
Most SSDs use flash memory with a digital design technology called NAND, which retains memory even without power
SSD can easily achieve a sustained read rate of 62 megabytes (MB) per second and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer. This is more than 100 times faster than most hard disk drives
And also, the extremely low power consumption rate compared to the hard disk drive makes the SSDs more preferable on Laptops since they consume very less battery power and also helps extending the battery life.
Advantages of SSD over HDD:
- Higher Latency
- Comparatively Increased reliability as mechanical breakdowns are minimal
- Less noise since there are no moving parts
- Very lesser power consumption
- Supports higher number of parallel operations as the Integrated Chips control the Read/Write process
