Advantages and Disadvantages of Solid State Drives

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Definition
Architecture and Functions
Composition of SSDs
Applications
List of References

Introduction

The term solid-state was borrowed from solid-state physics and it meant the use of semiconductor devices instead of electron tubes. Currently, the term solid-state is used to differentiate solid-state electronics from the electromechanical peripherals (Barnes 2003, p.12).

Definition

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are storage devices that use solid-state memory in order to store up constant information or data. Since solid-state devices work almost the same way as hard disks, they tend to substitute the hard disks in their functions. RAM drives are solid-state devices that use SRAM or DRAM technologies instead of using Flash memories. This type of solid-state device should not be confused with the RAM disks. Solid-state drives are known to contain no moving parts. In modern technology, the NAND-based flash memory is the standard for many solid-state drives (Barnes 2003, p.76).

Architecture and Functions

Solid-state drives are made up of DRAM volatile memory or the NAND flash non-volatile memory (Barnes 2003, p. 49). SSD producers incorporate non-volatile memory in order to come up with stronger and compact gadgets for the consumer market. These non-battery SSD gadgets that are designed using flash memory technology are called flash drives. Their standard form factor is 1.8-inch, 2.5 inch, and 3.5 inch (Bandopadhyay 2004, p.98).

Composition of SSDs

They contain the following parts:

Cache: negligible space in DRAM is used as the cache especially the flash-based SSD (Bose 2001, p.87).
Capacitor/batteries: High speeds SSDs use the capacitor or some kind of battery in order to preserve data reliability in case of sudden power blackouts (Bose 2001, p.87).

Speed of SSDs

The speed of an SSD device will depend on the total number of parallel NAND flash chips used. An increase in the number of flash chips in an SSD results in an increase in bandwidth scale and low latency. The incorporation of data stripping and data interleaving technologies by Micron/Intel SSD resulted in the development of ultra-fast SSDs (Khanchandani and Singh 2006, p.76).

Advantages of Solid-State Devices (SSDs):

They are less fragile than hard disks since they don’t contain any moving parts.
They are silent unless a fan is installed in them.
They don’t experience mechanical delays.
They have minimal latency and access time (Barnes 2003, p.132).
Flash memory SSDs are non-volatile hence they can keep the memory even during sudden power blackouts (Barnes 2003, p.133).
They consume less power and produce negligible heat
Their capability to withstand severe shock, altitude, vibration and a lot of heat makes them useful for mobile computers and even laptops (Barnes 2003, p.133).
They are light in weight and smaller in size making them easily portable.
They have enormous data density which can be up to one Terabyte give them a preference over the hard disk since SSDs data density is twice that of HDDs (Barnes 2003, p.134).
They have fewer chances of data damage since their failure is not often.
No need for Defragmentation.
Since they lack read/write heads, their random-access memory is faster (Barnes 2003, p.134).

Disadvantages of Solid-State Devices (SSDs):

Their lifetime is limited to approximately two million write cycles (Rashid 2005, P.56)
They have security problems due to the use of wear leaving technology in most flash-based SSDs (Rashid 2005, p.56)
Their performance degrades with the use (Rashid 2005, p.57)
DRAM-based SSD uses power even when the computer is switched off thus much use of power (Rashid 2005, p.57).
Their writing speeds are low, especially the SATA-based SSDs (Rashid 2005, p.57).
They are expensive in terms of a gigabyte as compared with the hard disks (Rashid 2005, p.57).
They have a low storage capacity as compared with HDDs.

Applications

The SSDs are mainly used in the construction of network devices from general-purpose computer peripherals. Also, a flash drive that is write-protected and contains an operating system and other application software can be used instead of HDDs or CD-ROMs (Bandopadhyay 2004, 176).

List of References

Bandopadhyay, M. N. (2004) Power Electronics and Solid State Drives: Theory and Practice. New Delhi, Khanna Publishers.

Barnes, M. (2003) Practical Variable Speed Drives and Power Electronics, New Delhi, Newnes.

Bose, B, K. (2001) Modern Power Electronics and AC Drives, New Delhi, Prentice Hall.

Khanchandani, K. and Singh, M. (2006) Power Electronics. New Delhi, Tata Mcgraw Hill.

Rashid, M, H. (2005) Spice for Power Electronics and Electric Power. New Delhi, Crc Press.

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