Solid State Drive (SSD)

A Solid State Drive (short SSD) is a storage medium for reading and writing Data on a semiconductor chip and is one of the hard disk types used in computer technology.

Solid State Drive General:
The SSD is an electronic memory based on semiconductors and is used in computer technology to store data. In contrast to rotating hard disks based on magnetic storage or optical storage disks, the solid state drive does not have mechanical components for reading and writing. Therefore, the name "drive" in Solid State Drive is rather misleading and refers to the definition of a storage medium commonly used in computer technology.
SSD memories can be found on the market in the most diverse shapes and sizes. The price varies depending on the memory size and compactness of the design, as well as the application area.

Functionality:
Conventional hard disks with storage disks require a read head, which reads the data by movement from the surface and makes the relevant data available. This principle is similar to a record player. If data is located on another, physically distant area of the disk, the reading process takes a relatively long time. By contrast, solid state drives use addresses to distinguish one data area from another. Physical distance is no longer a factor here, since data can be read and written independently of other data areas.

Costs:
A good way to compare SSD memories is to calculate the cost per storage unit. The cost of the product is divided by the storage capacity, in megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB). The lower the cost per storage unit, the cheaper the storage. As a rule, storage in the terabyte range is cheaper than storage in the gigabyte or megabyte range, since this is where economies of scale of the storage cells come into play. For the end customer, this calculation is extremely important for assessing the price/performance ratio, but is often not used or is not known. The decisive factor is therefore not the final price of an SSD hard disk, but the ratio of cost to storage capacity.

Advantages and disadvantages:
By eliminating sensitive read and write mechanisms, an SSD drive is considered robust and increases shock resistance. Also with regard to temperature tolerance, an SSD offers a better performance both in operation and in the working environment of the hard disk drive. Bandwidth. Due to their compact design, SSDs are mainly found in mobile solutions such as MP3 players and USB sticks. Due to the low access times, data can be read faster and, among other things, when used in computer technology, lead to an acceleration of the start phase in laptops or desktop PCs. A further advantage is that the connections for SSD memory are not subject to any standardization.
However, there are significant differences in the quality of the solid state drive. Between 3,000 and 100,000 write operations per memory cell can be achieved. For intensive memory applications, this can be achieved after only a few days. At the end of the lifetime, the contents of these cells can be forgotten or the information can no longer be deleted. Manufacturers counteract this electrical effect with complicated algorithms so that the individual memory cells are used as evenly as possible. These distribution methods vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and are neither visible nor can be influenced. Depending on the complexity of the process used and the application of the solid state drive, the service life is nevertheless comparable to conventional hard disks.