When I first started helping customers shop solid state drives, I noticed most people were overwhelmed by the technical jargon. The popularity of SSDs in laptops, desktop PCs, and servers has skyrocketed because they transform an old desktop PC or laptop through simple upgrading. Unlike traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), these storage mediums use non-volatile flash memory to hold and access data without any moving mechanical parts. This big difference creates substantial benefits compared to spinning disk hard drives, allowing you to enhance performance across your entire system with one simple upgrade.
Having worked with flash memory technology for years, I’ve seen how SSDs read and write data digitally without needing to mechanically seek out information. This results in instant boot and load times that would have seemed impossible just decades ago. While computers traditionally stored data on hard disk drives with their spinning platter and arm that moves across each platter to read every portion of data, the moving components in HDDs make them among the most likely pieces of computer hardware to fail or break. SSD technology operates completely differently using a chip made with NAND flash memory, eliminating moving parts for a much more durable component.
What SSDs Do in Your System
Your SSD or HDD serves as your computer’s long-term memory, constantly storing and remembering files even when your device is off. It works seamlessly with your system’s memory (RAM) and processor to access and use data including your operating system, programs, documents, games, images, and music. When you need to access data from a spreadsheet for basic edits, here’s what happens behind the scenes: your programs and files are housed on your storage drive (the spreadsheet you want to access), and when you open that spreadsheet, your processor transfers the program data from your storage SSD or HDD to your computer’s RAM for short-term access and use.
This critical stage is where SSDs truly showcase their value by dramatically speeding up the data transfer process compared to HDDs. The time it takes to load programs and files becomes virtually instantaneous. Your processor then accesses data from RAM, which acts as your computer’s bank of available workspace, while memory is used to run each program. Understanding the difference between your computer’s memory and storage helps you appreciate the importance of having a great storage device working in unison with your memory. Installing an SSD remains one of the easiest ways to transform nearly every aspect of your system’s performance, making slow load times a thing of the past.
Performance Benefits That Matter
Durability and reliability represent the foundation of why I recommend SSDs to every client. Heat is a major cause of failures in hard drives, and there’s enough heat generated by the continual motion of an HDD’s moving parts to cause breakdown over time. Since an SSD lacks these parts, they maintain a lower temperature while delivering higher performance. An SSD is also better suited to handle drops, shakes, shocks, and everyday wear and tear, making them less apt to experience data loss. SSDs are genuinely faster than hard drives – we’re talking about a hundred times faster than HDDs.
SSDs offer shorter boot times for your computer, more immediate data transfer, and higher bandwidth. These faster speeds mean SSDs can handle data at the ultra-speeds necessary in today’s business world, especially when running programs that access large amounts of data like your operating system. Plus, SSDs are remarkably stable, ensuring your stored data remains secure. A SATA SSD comparison reveals that HDDs could only achieve 50-120 MB/s in write performance, while SSDs saturate the SATA bus at 550 MB/s. Despite bus limitation, it’s common to see an overall system performance improvement of 10-15 times when using SATA-based SSDs in place of legacy HDD technology.
NVMe SSDs take performance even further. NVMe technology utilizes the PCIe bus instead of the SATA bus to unlock enormous bandwidth potential for storage devices. PCIe 4.0 (the current version) offers up to 32 lanes and can, in theory, transfer data up to 64,000MB/s compared to the 600MB/s specification limit of SATA III. Power and energy efficiency also set SSDs apart since they have no moving parts and need less power to operate compared to an HDD with its magnetic spinning disk. This energy efficiency provides a big benefit when using an SSD in PCs and mobile devices where battery longevity is a highly marketable and asked-for feature.
Form Factor Flexibility
Less weight and no noise make SSDs practical for modern computing. Their smaller size allows SSDs to weigh less than larger HDDs with their magnetic heads and metallic disks. The compact design makes SSDs perfect for laptops, tablets, and other small electronic devices. The absence of moving parts also makes SSDs infinitely quieter than HDDs, whose noise and vibrations can be quite distracting. More practical sizes and form factors have emerged since their release – while HDDs have been limited by their larger sizes, SSDs are available in a variety of sizes, from the smallest being the size of a stick of gum to the standard 2.5″ form factor.
Beyond being faster, SSDs are more durable because they lack moving parts that can get broken or worn out. They use less energy, saving battery life on portable devices like laptops. These are just a few examples of great SSD benefits. External SSDs (also known as portable SSDs) are solid state hard drives that can be swapped out without the need to open your computer. They’re made to be used with multiple systems and devices, including desktop PCs, laptops, Macs, iPads, Chromebooks, Android mobile devices, and iPhones.
Understanding SSD Types
The most common SSD form factors include several options worth considering. The 2.5″ form factor remains the most common, offering the best value per GB in an enclosed design. mSATA features a very small form factor with a different connection type and bare circuit board, making it excellent where space is a concern. M.2 also uses a bare circuit board and is available in both SATA and PCIe NVMe configurations with an extremely small form factor about the size of a stick of gum.
There are two types of consumer SSDs: SATA and NVMe. Not all SSDs are compatible with every computer, so it’s important to know the type, form factor, and interface of any drive you buy. SATA 2.5-Inch SSDs represent the first type of SSD sold to consumers – a SATA (serial ATA) 2.5-inch drive that fits inside the drive bay designed to hold hard disk drives. Because many users replace their hard drives with solid state drives, the 2.5-inch drive has become a standard for both HDDs and SSDs. They’re designed to minimize the need to replace the connecting AHCI (advanced host controller interface) cables, making the transition to a higher performance drive as easy as possible.
The fastest SSDs on the market today are NVMe M.2 PCIe SSDs, which are about the size of a stick of gum. You may see them labelled interchangeably as M.2, PCIe, NVMe, or some combination of these terms, which can be confusing. To break down this simply: M.2 is the form factor of this technology, initially designed to mount expansion cards inside a PC. Combined with the PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) interface, this technology allows data to be transferred faster than SATA. NVMe (non-volatile memory express) is a communication protocol developed specifically for SSDs that reduces CPU overhead and streamlines operations to increase input and output (I/O) per second and lower latency – all of which increases the speed. When combined, NVMe, M.2, and PCIe technology creates the fastest storage products the market has ever seen – and they keep getting faster!
Manufacturing Excellence
An SSD is made of several memory chips installed on a circuit board. Micron, the parent company of Crucial, manufactures the flash memory chips in-house on silicon wafers, similar to how Micron makes its computer memory. The wafers move through more than 800 operations, which take more than a month to complete. Throughout this process, many layers of materials are added to each wafer, including conductive materials like copper and non-conductive materials like silicon dioxide.
After each layer of material is applied, the wafer is coated with light-sensitive fluid. Ultraviolet light is then flashed onto it through a glass stencil of the electrical circuitry pattern. Where the light contacts the materials, they break down and dissolve. Where the materials are shielded by the stencil, they remain intact, which prints the circuitry pattern on the wafer. Chemical baths then wash away any residual material. After printing, each 30-centimeter wafer yields hundreds of chips, which must be sliced apart. After the chips are cut apart, they’re inserted into a protective plastic housing.
Large circuit boards are covered with tin alloy solder paste in the areas where memory chips and other components will be attached. A robot attaches the components to the board, then the assembled boards go into an oven that fuses the components to the board. The boards first go through an optical scan to verify that the components are in the correct place. Then, the next machine x-rays the board to ensure that everything is soldered in the correct place. The large circuit boards are now cut into individual boards and inserted into plastic housing in the case of the form factor.
Quality Assurance Process
Every drive is labelled with its model and serial numbers, technical specifications, and other information. One other piece of information is a bar code for production tracking. The drives are tested to verify functionality and the firmware that runs the drive is installed. The drive then undergoes up to 60 hours of performance testing to ensure that it stores data correctly and reads and writes at target speeds. Micron’s SSDs are also tested with various motherboards to ensure widespread compatibility.
The drives are then packaged with a foil pouch to avoid static electricity, placed in a carton, and sent out to be sold all over the world. Crucial SSDs are available in more than 190 countries and territories. This extensive quality control process ensures that when you shop solid state drives, you’re getting a product that has been thoroughly vetted for reliability and performance.
Investment Considerations
SSDs can be more expensive than HDDs. Because SSD technology is much newer than the technology in HDDs, their development costs are higher compared to HDDs. However, the overall gap is narrowing and the SSD dollar-per-GB price has gone down considerably over the past several years. Upgrading to a solid-state drive and increasing memory are two easy and cost-effective options for increasing PC or laptop performance. Even relatively new systems see a significant performance gain when a traditional hard drive is upgraded to an SSD. Users experience pages that load faster and applications that launch quicker. With this being said, the benefits of upgrading to an SSD outweigh the cost.
Choosing the right SSD for your server is important since server SSDs are optimized to perform at a predictable latency level while client (desktop/laptop) SSDs are not. These differences result in better uptime and less lag for critical apps and services. Testing is a cornerstone of our commitment to deliver the most reliable products on the market. We perform rigorous tests on all our products during each stage of production. These tests ensure quality control throughout the entire manufacturing process.
Frequently Asked Questions
SSD stands for solid state drive, and HDD stands for hard disk drive. These are the two main storage options available today. SSDs store data with a newer technology than HDDs. Like USB drives, SSDs use flash memory to store data, which is accessed digitally, though SSDs work much faster. SSDs are faster and more power-efficient than HDDs as they have no moving parts. That performance improvement comes at a price, so SSDs are usually more expensive, though the difference in price between the two types of storage technology has lessened considerably since SSDs first came to market.
Traditional HDDs use mechanical spinning platters and a moving read/write head to access data. In contrast, SSDs use a digital memory chip to access data instantly. This makes SSDs faster. They also consume less power and are less faulty than their mechanical counterparts.
