SSD is short for Solid-State Drive. SSDs are more attractive than traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) because they offer more speed and reliability (no moving parts). An HDD is made up of a number of spinning magnetic platters which store data, and a number of read/write heads on mechanical arms which move over the surface of the platters. An SSD drive works is completely different than a HDD. It uses a solid state storage medium, typically NAND (often known as flash), and data is written to or read from the NAND by a controller, which effectively is the brains of the device.
The adoption of SSDs for primary storage has accelerated. According to the latest data published by CONTEXT, the IT market intelligence company, by the end of 2020, no new laptop in a mature market such as Western Europe will be sold with a hard disk drive as its primary storage.
SSDs offer a great opportunity to upgrade a computer system, whether desktop or laptop.
The most common type of SSD, 2.5" SATA III SSDs resemble traditional HDDs in size and connectivity. They utilize the Serial ATA (SATA) interface, which provides a bandwidth of 6 Gbps. This translates to read speeds of up to 550 MB/s and write speeds of up to 520 MB/s. 2.5" SATA III SSDs are a cost-effective option for upgrading laptops and desktops with slower HDDs.
M.2 SSDs are a newer form factor that offers smaller size and reduced cable clutter compared to 2.5" SSDs. They are directly inserted into the motherboard's M.2 slot, eliminating the need for SATA cables. M.2 SSDs can utilize either SATA or the newer NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) interface.
PCIe SSDs, also known as NVMe SSDs, directly connect to the motherboard's PCIe expansion slot, bypassing the SATA interface. This allows PCIe SSDs to achieve the fastest read and write speeds of any SSD type, reaching up to 7,000 MB/s and 6,500 MB/s for PCIe 4.0 SSDs. PCIe SSDs are primarily used for high-end workstations, gaming desktops, and professional applications that demand exceptional performance.
Portable USB 3.2 SSDs are small, lightweight, and rugged external storage devices that connect to computers through a USB port. They offer significantly faster read and write speeds than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), making them ideal for on-the-go data transfer, backup, and file storage. Portable USB 3.2 SSDs typically use the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) interface, which enables them to achieve read and write speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s.
SSDs are definitely faster but “how much faster” depends upon the computer, the OS, any drivers loaded, applications in use, the speed and configuration of the processor and many other factors. Test web sites and industry magazines tested SSDs against HDDs and found SSDs to be much faster. For example, if we compare random read performance, SSDs are more than 100% faster than high-performance HDDs.
It is worth noting that SSD drives are not affected by the physical limitations of hard drives. HDD platters are circular in design (like a CD) and data held at the center of the circle is accessed at a slower rate than data on the edges. SSDs have a uniform access time across the entire drive. HDD performance also suffers from data fragmentation, but SSD performance is not significantly impacted even if the data is not stored contiguously.
Host Memory Buffer (HMB) is a technology that allows DRAMless NVMe SSDs to utilize a portion of the system's main memory (RAM) as a cache for storing frequently accessed data. This can improve the overall performance of the SSD, especially for write-heavy workloads.
Without HMB, DRAMless SSDs would have to rely on the slower NAND flash memory to store data, which can lead to performance bottlenecks. By using main memory as a cache, HMB can significantly reduce the number of I/O operations required to read and write data, resulting in faster transfer speeds and improved responsiveness.
HMB is particularly beneficial for applications that involve frequent small writes, such as booting up the operating system, loading applications, and copying files. It can also help to reduce latency and improve the overall performance of video editing and gaming applications.
However, it's important to note that HMB is still relatively new technology, and not all systems and motherboards support it. Additionally, the performance benefits of HMB can vary depending on the specific SSD and system configuration.
Overall, HMB is a promising technology that can help to improve the performance of DRAMless NVMe SSDs. However, it's not a substitute for having on-board DRAM, and its effectiveness will depend on the specific system and workload.
SLC cache, also known as Single-Level Cell cache, is a technique used in solid-state drives (SSDs) to improve performance. It involves reserving a portion of the SSD's NAND flash memory to act as a high-performance cache for frequently accessed data. This can significantly boost read and write speeds, particularly during initial data loading and bursts of data transfers.
The SLC cache works by storing frequently accessed data in a special area of the SSD's memory, which is optimized for faster data reads and writes. This allows the SSD to handle these high-demand operations more efficiently, reducing latency and improving overall system responsiveness.
Once the SLC cache is filled, the SSD switches to using the remaining NAND flash memory for storing data. While the NAND flash memory is slower than the SLC cache, it still offers significant performance improvements over traditional hard disk drives (HDDs).
The size of the SLC cache varies depending on the SSD model. More expensive SSDs typically have larger SLC caches, allowing them to handle more data without experiencing performance slowdowns.
Overall, SLC cache is a valuable feature that can significantly enhance the performance of SSDs, making them ideal for high-performance applications and demanding workloads.
IOPS (Input/output Operations per Second) is the unit of measurement to show the number of transactions per second a storage device (HDD or SSD) can handle. IOPS (should not be confused with read/write speeds) pertain to server workloads.
All operating systems support SSD drives, but not all operating systems are optimized to keep SSDs working at the peak performance. In fact, older operating systems (Windows XP and Windows Vista) do not support certain SSD maintenance features like TRIM.
Before you can use your new SSD you have to initialize and partition it. If you are performing a clean installation of your operating system, or cloning to your SSD, it is not necessary to follow these steps. A clean installation of your operating system or cloning to an SSD will initialize and partition the new SSD.
Note: if you simply need to format/reformat a drive, only steps 5-9 below will be needed, assuming your SSD has been previously initialized.
Your drive shows up smaller than advertised because storage drive capacity is calculated and reported slightly differently than other capacities in computing.
If you look at the specifications of any storage device, you will see a note that says something along the lines of ”1 GB = 1 billion bytes. Actual usable capacity may vary.” In other words, the drive capacity is reported on the assumption that 1GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes. A 480 GB SSD is, in other words, actually 480,000,000,000 bytes; these are what we call decimal bytes, and it has been an industry standard to use them when advertising storage space.
A Unix® based operating system like macOS X® or Linux® uses decimal bytes when reporting storage space, so a 480GB SSD will show up as 480 GB in Mac Disk Utility for instance. The Windows® OS on the other hand uses binary bytes, so 1,024 bytes per Kilobyte, 1,024 KB per Megabyte, and so on. This means that when you install a 480,000,000,000 bytes storage drive into a Windows® computer, that computer converts the number of bytes into gigabytes by dividing by 1024 all the way up through the scale, not by dividing by 1,000. Doing the math, this is what we end up with:
480,000,000,000 Bytes / 1,024 = 468,750,000 actual Kilobytes
468,750,000 KB / 1,024 = 457,764 actual Megabytes
457,764 MB / 1,024 = 447 actual Gigabytes
This is why a 480 GB SSD will be reported by a Windows computer as 447 GB. The larger the numbers are, the larger the discrepancies will be. On an 8 GB USB drive the difference between the advertised capacity and the actual capacity is about half a gigabyte, while in our example above the difference is a very noticeable 33 GB.
Yet the 33 GB aren’t lost. The drive is 480,000,000,000 bytes in capacity, and after 480,000,000,000 bytes have been converted by a Windows computer into Gigabytes, the total capacity comes to 447 GB.
SSD drives use NAND Flash memory as the storage medium. One of the disadvantages of NAND Flash is that Flash cells will eventually wear out. To extend the memory’s useable life, the SSD’s memory controller employs various algorithms to spread the storage of data across all memory cells. This prevents any one cell (or group of cells) from being “over used.” The use of wear-levelling technology is widespread and is very effective.
S.M.A.R.T. stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology — is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and eMMC drives.