CyberLogic Blog

Many higher-end machines are being offered with Solid State Drives these days but the majority of end users aren’t familiar with this technology. So what are Solid State Drives and why are they better than traditional hard drives?

Solid State drives (SSDs) are high-performance plug-and-play storage devices that contains no moving parts. Whereas traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) have arms that move from side to side and platters that spin, SSDs contain no moving parts at all. This gives SSDs a number of benefits over traditional HDDs.

Firstly, SSDs are a lot more reliable and can withstand a lot more shock and vibration than HDDs, with little or no damage or data loss. Secondly, SSDs are considerably faster than HHDs – anything up to 100 times faster, in fact! The typical access time for a SSD is around 35-100 micro-seconds whereas a typical HDD has an access time of 5000-10000 micro-seconds. Thirdly, SSDs use a fraction of the amount of power that HDDs do.

Lastly, whereas HDDs generate a lot of heat due to friction, SSDs generate a lot less heat . This does away with the need for extra cooling fans and is a huge advantage when it comes to laptops and portable devices that need to reduce power consumption for a better battery life.

So with all of these benefits, why are well not all running  SSDs on our machines yet? The biggest reason is price; SDDs are more expensive than HDDs at this point in time. Of course, the gap will close but for the time being SSDs are mainly used on the higher-end machines.