What is SSD drive?

Summary

A solid state drive, SSD, also called solid state disk or solid state hard drive is a high-performance plug-and-play storage device. EaseUS Todo Backup can backup all data on SSD drive.

A solid state drive, SSD, also called solid state disk or solid state hard drive is a high-performance plug-and-play storage device that contains no moving parts. It is smaller, lighter and faster than the conventional hard disk drive (HDD). Solid state drives run near silent and consume very little power.

A solid-state drive, SSD, is a data storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. SSD technology uses electronic interfaces compatible with traditional block input/output (I/O) hard disk drives. SSDs do not employ any moving mechanical components, which distinguishes them from traditional magnetic disks such as hard disk drives (HDDs) or floppy disks, which are electromechanical devices containing spinning disks and movable read/write heads. Compared with electromechanical disks, SSDs are typically less susceptible to physical shock, are usually silent, and have lower access time and latency. However, while the price of SSDs has continued to decline in 2012, SSDs are still about 10 times more expensive per unit of storage when compared to HDDs.

SSDs share the I/O interface technology developed for hard disk drives, thus permitting simple replacement for most applications.

As of 2010, most SSDs use NAND-based flash memory, which retains data without power. For applications requiring fast access, but not necessarily data persistence after power loss, SSDs may be constructed from random-access memory (RAM). Such devices may employ separate power sources, such as batteries, to maintain data after power loss.

Differences between SSD and HDD

Making a comparison between SSDs and ordinary (spinning) HDDs is difficult. Traditional HDD benchmarks tend to focus on the performance characteristics that are poor with HDDs, such as rotational latency and seek time. As SSDs do not need to spin or seek to locate data, they may prove vastly superior to HDDs in such tests. However, SSDs have challenges with mixed reads and writes, and their performance may degrade over time. SSD testing must start from the (in use) full disk, as the new and empty (fresh out of the box) disk may have much better write performance than it would show after only weeks of use.

Most of the advantages of solid-state drives over traditional hard drives are due to their ability to access data completely electronically instead of electromechanically. On the other hand, traditional hard drives offer significantly higher capacity for their price.

While SSDs appear to be more reliable than HDDs, researchers at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research "are adamant that today's SSDs aren't an order of magnitude more reliable than hard drives". SSD failures are often catastrophic, with total data loss. While HDDs can fail in this manner as well, they often give warning that they are failing, allowing much or all of their data to be recovered. Additionally, the robustness of an SSD varies greatly amongst models. Traditional hard drives store their data in a linear, ordered manner. SSDs, however, constantly rearrange their data while keeping track of their locations for the purpose of wear leveling. As such, the flash memory controller and its firmware play a critical role in maintaining data integrity.

EaseUS Todo Backup is a reliable data backup & system disaster recovery software to backup data from SSD drive.