Solid State Drive : Time to change your storage technology

In this digitized world we usually spend more time with computers than with our friends and families. And when your best companion slows down and refuses talking to you, you might feel irritated, tormented, and hostile. So how can you speed up your computer's performance so that it might not pose any problems in smooth functioning. Adding more memory to your PC might be a solution but there are practical limitations to it. A new technology in the storage device, SSD can help improve the speed and performance. Let's see how?

About Solid State Drive

Solid state is an electrical term refering to electronic circuitry, totally built of semiconductors. Initially this term was used to define those electronics items that were constructed from semiconductors rather than vacuum tubes. In a solid state drive, the primary storage medium is semiconductors unlike the magnetic media in a hard drive. It uses solid-state memory to store persistent data.

Why Solid State Drive?

So what are the advantages of using solid state drives. Let's see how can you be more benefitted by using SSD than hard drive. The foremost advantage of SSD is that it does not have any moving parts. The traditional drives have drive motors to spin the drive heads and the magnetic platters. All the data in flash memory chips are stored on a solid state drive.

• Faster Data Access: This can be the most attracting feature of SSDs. Neither the drive have to spin the platter nor to move the drive heads, data can be instantly read. It can roughly speed up the process to 20%.
• Less Power Usage: Since there are no motors in the solid state drives, they don't draw power. Due to that it use less energy than the regualr hard drives. Power factor has a key in portable computers.
• Higher Reliability: The SSDs add to the relaibility of portable drives. Hard drives are very sensitive and fragile. They are prone to damage even in the case of small collision, finally resulting in complete data loss. In SSD data is stored in memory chips, so there are fewer chances to be damaged in any sort of impact.

Limitations On Its Use

Solid state drives have been available for quite some time. The cost of a SSD is roughly equal to one entire notebook. That is the main limiting factor, which has checked its usage in wide number of PCs. But gradually this scenario is changing as more and more companies are producing the drives. The capacity for producing the flash memory chips also continues to grow. The cost of SS drives have been reduced to less than half compared to its price one year ago.

Capacity of the SSDs is also another problem in its adoption. The hard drive technologies allows for over 200 GB of data in a small 2,5 inch notebook hard drive. But most of the SSD drives are of the 64GB capacity. Thus the higher price of SSDs are even providing a fraction of data.

Possibilities Lies Ahead

In near future you will get SSDs closer to the capacities of hard drives and at prices comparable to hard drives. A number of companies specialized in flash memory are coming up with the products that look set to the push the capapcities of SSDs. The market for solid state drive disks is set to increase at a 70 per cent compound annual growth rate from 2007-2012 with enterprise storage expected to provide a steady base.