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Solid-State Drive[]

By Steffen Barr[]

A Solid-State Drive, or SSD, is a storage drive that uses non-volatile memory. These work similarly to RAM, or Random Access Memory, more on that here. Unlike a Hard Drive, or HDD, the Solid-State Drive does not have any moving parts. Learn more about Hard Disk Drives here. This allows many advantages such as accessing stored information quicker, silent operation, increased reliability, and decreased power consumption. Having an SSD also allows your system to boot much faster. Booting can usually it can be done in under a minute when from an SSD. This first image shows what an average SSD looks like. (Computer Hope)

20-147-373-09
IBM7094
Ssd

The Solid-State Drive is connected to the motherboard through a SATA cable and the Power Supply through a wire. Learn more about the Motherboard here and the Power Supply here. The Solid State Drive uses flash memory chips to store its data. In other words, the Solid-State Drive stores its data electronically instead of magnetically, which is how the Hard Disk Drive stores its data. This negates the issue of waiting for a common Hard Disk Drive to spin up and move its head to the proper position to read or write data. Common SSD's are marketed to use TLC NAND flash, however, newer SSD's from Toshiba and Samsung are using 3D NAND where these flash memory cells are stacked on top of eachother in verticle layers. (Torres)

The Solid State Drive was invented in the 1950's as engineers were working on advancing storage systems. One of the earlier versions of storage was the "paper tape" or a roll of paper with holes punched out. These paper tapes were inserted into the machine in order to execute a program and gain a result. Each time you wanted to execute these programs, they would need to be loaded into the machine because the machines did not have enough RAM to store the programs. (Rent) IBM did not let this stop them. They made magnetic strip cards, magnetic tape, and magnetic disks, however, they were still motor assisted and mechanical and never used as a primary system on the main business machines. As IBM advanced, they made the heads on the magnetic discs move and eventually made the Hard Disk Drive. This encouraged them to push further. IBM began to work with transistors and came out with their first version of the Solid-State Drive. They called it the Charged Capacitor Read Only Store. At the same time, a different kind of Solid-State Drive was being developed using magnetism. It worked by "magnetizing an array of small ferrite cores individually in one polarity or the other." (Rent)

Works Cited

“What Is SSD (Solid-State Drive)?” Computer Hope, Computer Hope, 2 Oct. 2017, Web. 11/26/17

Rent, Thomas M. “Origin of Solid State Drives.” StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews, Storage Review, 19 Mar. 2010. Web. 11/26/17

Torres, Gabriel. “Gabriel Torres.” Hardware Secrets, 12 June 2015. Web. 11/26/17

https://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/ProductImage/20-147-373-09.jpg

http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HtmlHelp/Images2/IBM7094.jpg

http://www.technomag.co.zw/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ssd.jpg

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