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Asolid statedrive is a storage device that uses solid state memory to store data. Whiletechnically not a disk, a solid state drive will often be referred to as a solid state disk drive, or asolid state disk, in reference to the fact that, in some ways, it replaces the traditional hard disk drive.Hard disk drives have been a faithful servant to computing for many years. But withheads, platters,magnetic surfaces, spindlesand an array of other complex moving parts, they are most certainly fallible. They can be slow, too: disks have to start spinning if they're not already doingso, then they have to get the head to the correct position on the disk to read or write the data. Addthis to the physical problems occurring when a piece of dust or other foreign object gets into themechanism, or when an impact jolts the drive, and we have a distinctly imperfect system. Solidstate drives address many of these timing and structural problems inherent in the hard disk drive.The principle behind solid state drives is that there should be no moving parts: no spinning platters, no moving heads. Data is split into word length pieces and stored in memory. It is thenaccessed almost instantaneously using unique system-wide addresses. This behaviour has beenused in computer RAMfor many years, but for a long time it was too expensive for manufacturers to consider using it as persistent storage in sufficient volumes to replace the harddisk drive.Solid state disks use either NANDflash or SDRAM(non-volatile andvolatile storage respectively). NAND flash is so-called because of the NAND-gate technology it uses and iscommon inUSBflash drives and many types of memory card. NAND flash based drives are persistent and can therefore effectively mimic a hard disk drive. Synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) is volatile and requires a separate power source if it is to operateindependently from a computer.Solid state drives may be preferred over traditional disk drives for a number of reasons. The firstadvantage is found, as mentioned briefly above, in the speed of operation. Because hard disk drives need to be spinning for the head to read sectors of the platter, sometimes we have to waitfor "spin up" time. Once the disk is spinning, the head mustseek the correct place on the disk,and from there the disk must spin just enough so that the correct data is read. If data is spreadover different parts of the disk (fragmented) then this operation is repeated until all the data has been read or written. While each individual operation only takes fractions of a second the sum of them may not. It is often the case that reads to and writes from the hard disk are the bottleneck ina system.Because the information on solid state drives can be accessed immediately (technically at thespeed of light) there is nolatencyexperience when data is transferred. Because there is norelationship between spatial locality and retrieval speed, there is no degradation of performancewhen data is fragmented.

Consequences of the increased speed of writes for fragmented data include a much decreasedapplication start up time: SanDisk, for instance, claim to have achieved Windows Vista start uptimes of around 30 seconds for a laptop with its SSD SATA 5000 2.5".Solid state drives also enjoy greater stability over their disk counterparts. Because there are nomoving parts there is less that can go wrong mechanically. Dust entering the device ceases to become a problem (and in any case solid state drives can be sealed air tight unlike disk driveswhich require a certain air cushion to function properly), and dropping the drive is less likely tocause damage to the data. There are no heads so head crashes are a thing of the past.This speed and stability comes at a price, of course, and in early models prices of even the mostmodest of solid state capacities greatly surpassed that of the largest hard disksTotal cost of ownership—that’s the real value proposition for solid state storage. Although stillin the development stage, solid state storage solutions can offer:

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Lower power consumption compared to hard drives

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Improved performance

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Improved environmental balanceBut also know that solid state storage technology can present its own set of challenges:

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Higher acquisition cost

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Lower life expectancy

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Lower capacities

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solid-state drive

(

SSD

) is adata storage devicethat usessolid-state memoryto store persistentdata. An SSDemulatesahard disk driveinterface, thus easily replacing it in most applications. An SSD usingSRAMor DRAM(instead of flash memory

) is often called a

RAM-drive

, not to be confused with a RAM disk . The original usage of the term solid-state (from solid-state physics) refers to the use of semiconductor devices rather thanelectron tubes,but in this context, has been adopted to distinguish solid-state electronics fromelectromechanicaldevices as well. With nomoving parts, solid-state drives are less fragile than hard disks and are also silent (unless a cooling fan is used);as there are no mechanical delays, they usually enjoy lowaccess timeandlatency.

Flash drives

Most SSD manufacturers use non-volatile flash memory to create more rugged and compactdevices for the consumer market. These flash memory-based SSDs, also known as flash drives,do not require batteries. They are often packaged in standard disk drive form factors (1.8-inch,2.5-inch, and 3.5-inch). In addition, non-volatility allows flash SSDs to retain memory evenduring sudden power outages, ensuring data persistence. SSDs are slower than DRAM and somedesigns are slower than even traditional HDDs on large files, but flash SSDs have no moving parts and thusseek timesand other delays inherent in conventional electro-mechanical disks arenegligible.Components:

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Cache: A flash-based SSD uses a small amount of DRAM as a cache, similar to the cacheinHard disk drives. A directory of block placement andwear levelingdata is also kept in the cache while the drive is operating.

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Energy storage: Another component in higher performing SSDs is a capacitor or someform of batteries. These are necessary to maintain data integrity such that the data in the