Tweeting Computer and Technology

A Solid State Drive or SSD is another form of data storage device commonly found in flash devices such as USB flash drives and memory cards. SSD drives hold certain advantages over the more common hard disks. Let us discuss the differences between a Solid State Drive and the typical hard drive.

Advantages:

• Durability – It is not sensitive to shocks and will not be easily damaged when dropped because there are no moving parts.
• Speed – Since it has no spinning platters, it does not require any spin up time to initialize which means that as soon as you boot-up the machine, it is ready for to use. It also offers faster random access rates because of the absence of a read and write head.
• Weight – It is lighter than hard drives because of lesser parts.
• Quiet – It doesn’t produce any noticeable noise
• Efficient – It consumes lesser power.

As you can see, all of the advantages are the result of having no moving parts.

Disadvantages:

• Security – I’m not going to go into details but data security is an issue with flash drives.
• Limited Write Cycles – Flash drives are limited to a number of write cycles
• Cost – Flash memory is more expensive compared to ordinary hard drives comparing it per gigabyte

The application of Solid State Drives to laptops is beneficial considering the nature of laptops being mobile devices. By employing SSD’s to mobile computers, the danger of data corruption from shocks and such is eliminated or at least reduced to a minimum. Also, battery life will increase substantially because there are no moving parts. Overall, this is good news for laptops. The only disadvantage would be the cost. At the moment SSD drives are still very expensive and only a lucky few can afford it.