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What is a solid state hard drive. SSD drive for computer. Which is better? Which SSD drive is better to buy



We have long been accustomed to hard drives that store our files, documents, videos, images, and everything in general. Hard drives have been around for a very long time. Back in 1956, IBM created a drive that rightfully bears the name of a hard drive. But a deeper and more standardized implementation of these information keepers occurred, of course, in connection with the growing popularity of personal computers.

At first, hard drives were bulky, extremely noisy and had only about 5-50 MB of available space, which, by the way, was enough at that time to install the operating system and all work applications, as well as a set of personal files.

Subsequently, the drives acquired the 3.5” desktop form factor that is still popular to this day, the number of vendors producing these products has decreased, and the volume of drives has grown year by year and has hundreds of megabytes, gigabytes, tens of them, and now thousands of gigabytes per one device.

Hard drives are used everywhere, in almost all computers, at one time there was an attempt to use them even in mobile phones, because at that time, Flash-memory chips were too expensive, unreliable and significantly lost in volume.

The principle of operation has not changed, in fact, for decades. Inside any HDD there is an engine, reading heads and magnetic plates. In other words, mechanics controlled by electronics. Moreover, all this must be in sterile conditions, and the safety of information depends on hundreds of different factors, which is why these devices are sensitive to many external manifestations of exposure.

The evolution of storage systems and the arrivalSSD.

Over time, not only the volume, but also the speed of hard drives grew, new communication interfaces came out, until, finally, they reached a logical "dead end" of development in their speed indicators. As much as we would like to, but it is almost impossible to create a very fast hard drive. Of course, there are separate “accelerated” drives (used, as a rule, in servers), but they are not omnipotent, and they are also much more expensive to manufacture.

At the same time, in parallel, another direction of information storage systems began to develop, which received the abbreviation SSD (Solid-State Drive), that is, a solid-state (or semiconductor) drive. SSD has a lot of differences from its opponent, the main thing is the absence of the entire mechanical part of the device, instead of which digital systems for writing / reading information are used.

In other words, a solid state drive consists of a controller that controls the operation of memory chips with information, which significantly increases both fault tolerance under physical impact and speed. The first experiments with SSDs took place back in 1978, when memory was used similar to operational (volatile) memory, it is able to store information only directly during operation, and then it is completely reset, which, of course, is inconvenient for the storage system.

Much later, with the advent of Flash-memory, that is, non-volatile microcircuits capable of storing information all the time, SSDs began to flourish, and the first manufacturers released new products. Today, many companies are exclusively engaged in the production of SSD devices, most often these are companies that are somehow connected with the production of memory chips, such as Samsung, Micron, Kingston and others. There are also a number of vendors that produce SSDs under their own brand, however, using ready-made products and "semi-finished products" from other manufacturers to assemble their own products.

An SSD consists of digital circuitry and contains no moving parts. The photo above shows the main components of the drive:

  1. Device memory chips. (usually placed on both sides of the printed circuit board). The volume, reliability and speed of the SSD depends on them.
  2. Microchip with buffer memory. Developers use different memory chips, but there was no direct dependence on the overall speed of the drive.
  3. Interface and power connectors. Modern SSDs use the SATA interface in its various versions (SATA-300, SATA-600). SATA is compatible with each other, but the latest versions of this interface allow you to unlock the potential of drives with high speed performance.
  4. Controller (processor) SSD. The SSD controller is one of the most important parts of the device. It depends on the controller how efficient the SSD will be, whether it will support cleaning technologies and how it is doing with reliability.

Advantages and disadvantagesSSD.

Main advantages:

1) As mentioned earlier, there are no moving parts in the SSD, hence the increased reliability under physical impact. That is, if you drop the hard drive, it will most likely start to malfunction, or stop working altogether, especially when it comes to impact during operation of the device. A solid state drive is akin to a "flash drive" can withstand light shocks, shocks, vibration.

2) The second and main advantage of SSD is speed. Moreover, many users confuse concepts a bit and believe that high linear read / write speeds of the device (exceeding those on hard drives) are a guarantee of high performance, but this is not entirely true. The main "chip" of the SSD was and remains the high speed of access and response, this is paramount for read operations and it is because of it that files and applications open almost instantly on solid-state drives. While the traditional HDD controller is forced to wait for operations performed by the device mechanics, the SSD controller is already processing this information by reading it from the memory chips. Moreover, the higher the load (the more different accesses to the logical disk), the greater the advantage will show SSD.

3) The mechanics inside the HDD also affect the power consumption of the device, which is much lower on SSDs.

4) The absence of moving parts affects the noise performance. The SSD does not produce any sounds, at all.

5) "Immunity" to file fragmentation. The HDD loses performance over time due to the fragmentation of recorded files, when they are "scattered" across the platter and the device needs more time to read these files. This is what the defragmentation procedure was invented for. For an SSD, fragmentation is unimportant, as is the location of the file (which again is important for the HDD).

Main disadvantages:

1) Limited number of overwriting information cells. As an example, we can again cite ordinary memory cards, they all have only a limited number of operation cycles, which theoretically reduces the reliability of the device as a whole, in practice this means that the drive will work out its service life during normal use in a home computer / laptop. Developers take into account this feature of the drives, and therefore recommend not to "clog" them completely, leaving free space. However, SSDs often have an additional memory reserve designed just for this. This is necessary for the lifespan of the SSD, as its internal controller tries to avoid any cell getting a critical level of write cycles and constantly works to increase the lifespan of the device by choosing the least worn out cells.

2) Price for 1 GB. In terms of prices for 1 GB of information, SSDs are still losing to their "brothers" hard drives, but considering that every year, the volume of devices is growing, and prices are constantly decreasing, we can safely say that sooner or later solid-state memory will equal its price characteristics with hard drives (or replace it completely).

3) human factor. To work with SSD, it is desirable to follow a few simple rules. If they are neglected, then the device can “grow old” faster than the time allotted to it, which will affect the decrease in speed, and subsequently on the fault tolerance of the SSD.

SSD orHDD?

SSDs are evolving at an insane pace. Controllers and memory chips are constantly improving, production volumes are increasing, and even corporations are already switching to using solid state drives. The question of "what to choose now" is quite simple: ? But the time will soon come when HDDs, to one degree or another, will begin to lose ground on the market, as it is happening, in fact, already now. And in the end, this question will disappear by itself. Think about it, not so long ago, everyone had CRT monitors on their desks, and people were arguing about expensive and inferior LCD devices. Similarly, we went to buy film for cameras. But will you find new models of CRT monitors in the store now, or maybe you will get something other than a digital camera for shooting vacations?


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A hard drive is needed to install the operating system, programs and store various user files (documents, photos, music, movies, etc.).

Hard drives differ in size, which determines the amount of data it can store, speed, which determines the performance of the entire computer, and reliability, which depends on its manufacturer.

Ordinary hard disk drives (HDD) are large in size, not high in speed, and are not expensive. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are the fastest, but they are smaller and much more expensive. An intermediate option between them are hybrid drives (SSHD), which have sufficient capacity, are faster than conventional HDDs and cost a little more.

Western Digital (WD) hard drives are considered the most reliable. The best SSD drives are produced by: Samsung, Intel, Crucial, SanDisk, Plextor. As more budget options, you can consider: A-DATA, Corsair, GoodRAM, WD, HyperX, since there are the least problems with them. And hybrid drives (SSHD) are produced mainly by Seagate.

For an office computer that is mainly used for working with documents and the Internet, a regular hard drive from the inexpensive WD Blue series with a capacity of up to 500 GB is sufficient. But 1 TB disks are optimal for today, since they are not much more expensive.

For a multimedia computer (video, simple games), it is better to use a 1 TB WD Blue drive as an additional one for storing files, and install a 120-128 GB SSD as the main one, which will significantly speed up the system and programs.

For a gaming computer, it is advisable to take an SSD with a capacity of 240-256 GB, it will be possible to install several games on it.
A-Data Ultimate SU650 240GB Hard Drive

For a more economical option for a multimedia or gaming PC, you can purchase one 1TB Seagate Hybrid Drive (SSHD), which is not as fast as an SSD, but still somewhat faster than a regular HDD.
Seagate FireCuda ST1000DX002 1TB Hard Drive

Well, for a powerful professional PC, in addition to an SSD (120-512 GB), you can take a fast and reliable WD Black hard drive of the required volume (1-4 GB).

I also recommend purchasing a high-quality external drive Transcend with a USB 3.0 interface for 1-2 TB for the system and important files for you (documents, photos, videos, projects).
Hard Drive Transcend StoreJet 25M3 1TB

2. Disk types

Modern computers use both classic magnetic platter hard drives (HDDs) and faster solid-state drives based on memory chips (SSDs). There are also hybrid drives (SSHD), which are a symbiosis of HDD and SSD.

The hard disk drive (HDD) has a large capacity (1000-8000 GB), but low speed (120-140 MB/s). It can be used for both system installation and user file storage, which is the most economical option.

Solid state drives (SSDs) are relatively small (120-960 GB) but very fast (450-550 MB/s). They are much more expensive and are used to install the operating system and some programs to increase the speed of the computer.

A hybrid drive (SSHD) is simply a hard drive that has a small amount of faster memory added to it. For example, it might look like 1TB HDD + 8GB SSD.

3. Application of HDD, SSD and SSHD drives

For an office computer (documents, Internet), it is enough to install one regular hard disk drive (HDD).

For a multimedia computer (movies, simple games), in addition to the HDD, you can put a small SSD drive, which will make the system much faster and more responsive. As a compromise between speed and volume, we can consider installing one SSHD disk, which will be much cheaper.

For a powerful gaming or professional computer, the best option is to install two drives - an SSD for the operating system, programs, games and a regular hard drive for storing user files.

4. Physical dimensions of disks

Hard drives for desktop computers are 3.5 inches in size.

Solid state drives are 2.5 inches in size, just like laptop hard drives.

An SSD drive is installed in a regular computer using a special mount in the case or an additional adapter.

Do not forget to purchase it if it is not included with the drive and your case does not have special mounts for 2.5″ drives. But now almost all modern cases have mounts for SSD drives, which is indicated in the description as internal 2.5″ bays.

5. Hard Drive Connectors

All hard drives have an interface connector and a power connector.

5.1. interface connector

An interface connector is called a connector for connecting a disk to a motherboard using a special cable (loop).

Modern hard drives (HDDs) have a SATA3 connector that is fully compatible with older versions of SATA2 and SATA1. If your motherboard has old connectors, don't worry, a new hard drive can be connected to them and it will work.

But for an SSD drive, it is desirable that the motherboard has SATA3 connectors. If your motherboard has SATA2 connectors, then the SSD drive will work at half its speed (about 280 Mb / s), which, however, is still much faster than a regular HDD.

5.2. Power connector

Modern hard drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) have the same 15-pin SATA power connectors. If the disk is installed in a desktop computer, its power supply must have such a connector. If not, then you can use a Molex-SATA power adapter.

6. Volumes of hard drives

For each type of hard disk, depending on its purpose, the amount of data that it can hold will be different.

6.1. Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Capacity for Computer

For a computer designed for typing and accessing the Internet, the smallest of modern hard drives is enough - 320-500 GB.

For a multimedia computer (video, music, photos, simple games) it is desirable to have a hard drive with a capacity of 1000 GB (1 TB).

A powerful gaming or professional computer may require a 2-4 TB drive (according to your needs).

Please note that the computer motherboard must support UEFI, otherwise the operating system will not see the entire disk capacity of more than 2 TB.

If you want to increase the speed of the system, but are not ready to spend money on an additional SSD drive, then as an alternative, you can consider purchasing a hybrid SSHD drive with a capacity of 1-2 TB.

6.2. Hard disk (HDD) capacity for a laptop

If the laptop is used as an addition to the main computer, then a 320-500 GB hard drive will be enough for it. If the laptop is used as the main computer, then it may require a 750-1000 GB hard drive (depending on the use of the laptop).
Hard Drive Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500 HTS545050A7E680 500GB

You can also install an SSD drive in a laptop, which will significantly increase its speed and system responsiveness, or an SSHD hybrid drive, which is slightly faster than a conventional HDD.
Seagate Laptop SSHD ST500LM021 500GB Hard Drive

It is important to consider what thickness of disks your laptop supports. Discs with a thickness of 7 mm will fit into any model, and 9 mm thick may not fit everywhere, although there are not many of these already produced.

6.3. Solid state drive (SSD) capacity

Since SSDs are not used for data storage, when determining their required capacity, you need to proceed from how much space the operating system installed on it will take up and whether you will install any other large programs and games on it.

Modern operating systems (Windows 7,8,10) require about 40 GB of space for their work and grow with updates. In addition, at least the main programs must be installed on the SSD, otherwise there will not be much sense from it. Well, for normal operation, the SSD should always have 15-30% free space.

For a multimedia computer (movies, simple games), the best option would be a 120-128 GB SSD, which will allow you to install several simple games on it in addition to the system and basic programs. Since the SSD is required not only to quickly open folders, it is rational to install the most powerful programs and games on it, which will speed up the speed of their work.

Heavy modern games take up a huge amount of space. Therefore, a powerful gaming computer requires a 240-512 GB SSD, depending on your budget.

For professional tasks such as editing high-quality video, or installing a dozen modern games, you need a 480-1024 GB SSD, again depending on the budget.

6.4. Data backup

When choosing a disk size, it is also desirable to take into account the need to create a backup copy of user files (video, photos, etc.) that will be stored on it. Otherwise, you risk losing everything that you have accumulated over the years in one moment. Therefore, it is often more expedient to purchase not one huge disk, but two smaller disks - one for work, the other (possibly external) for backing up files.

7. Basic parameters of disks

The main parameters of disks, which are often indicated in price lists, include the frequency of rotation of the spindle and the size of the memory buffer.

7.1. Spindle speed

The spindle has hard and hybrid disks based on magnetic platters (HDD, SSHD). Since SSDs are based on memory chips, they do not have a spindle. The speed of the hard drive spindle depends on the speed of its operation.

The hard drive spindle for desktop computers generally has a rotation speed of 7200 rpm. Sometimes there are models with a spindle speed of 5400 rpm, which are slower.

Laptop hard drives generally have a 5400 RPM spindle speed, which allows them to run quieter, run cooler, and consume less power.

7.2. Memory Buffer Size

A buffer is a hard drive cache based on memory chips. This buffer is designed to speed up the hard drive, but has a small impact (on the order of 5-10%).

Modern hard drives (HDD) have a buffer size of 32-128 MB. In principle, 32 MB is enough, but if the price difference is not significant, then you can take a hard drive with a larger buffer size. Optimally for today 64 MB.

8. Speed ​​characteristics of disks

Speed ​​characteristics common to HDD, SSHD and SSD drives include linear read/write speed and random access time.

8.1. Linear Reading Speed

Linear reading speed is the main parameter for any disk and dramatically affects the speed of its operation.

For modern hard drives and hybrid drives (HDD, SSHD), an average read speed of closer to 150 Mb/s is a good value. You should not buy hard drives with a speed of 100 Mb / s or less.

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are much faster and their read speed, depending on the model, is 160-560 MB/s. Optimal in terms of price / speed ratio are SSD drives with a read speed of 450-500 Mb / s.

As for downloading HDDs, sellers in their price lists usually do not indicate their speed parameters, but only the volume. Later in this article I will tell you how to find out these characteristics. With SSD drives, everything is easier, since their speed characteristics are always indicated in the price lists.

8.2. Linear write speed

This is a secondary parameter after the reading speed, which is usually indicated with it in pairs. For hard and hybrid drives (HDD, SSHD), the write speed is usually slightly lower than the read speed and is not considered when choosing a disk, since they are mainly guided by the read speed.

SSDs can have write speeds that are less than or equal to read speeds. In the price lists, these parameters are indicated through a slash (for example, 510/430), where a larger number means the read speed, a smaller one means the write speed.

For good fast SSDs, it is about 550/550 MB / s. But in general, the write speed affects the speed of the computer much less than the read speed. As a budget option, a slightly lower speed is allowed, but not lower than 450/350 Mb / s.

8.3. Access time

Access time is the second most important disk parameter after read/write speed. The access time affects the speed of reading/copying small files especially strongly. The lower this setting, the better. In addition, low access time indirectly indicates a higher quality of the hard disk (HDD).

A good hard disk drive (HDD) access time is 13-15 milliseconds. Values ​​in the range of 16-20 ms are considered a bad indicator. I will also tell you how to determine this parameter in this article.

As for SSD drives, their access time is 100 times less than that of HDD drives, so this parameter is not indicated anywhere and is not paid attention to.

Hybrid disk drives (SSHD) achieve lower access times than HDDs, which are comparable to SSDs, with additional built-in flash memory. But due to the limited amount of flash memory, a lower access time is only achieved when accessing the most frequently used files that have ended up in this flash memory. Usually these are system files, which provide faster computer boot speed and high system responsiveness, but do not drastically affect the operation of large programs and games, since they simply will not fit in the limited amount of fast SSHD memory.

9. Manufacturers of hard drives (HDD, SSHD)

The most popular hard drive manufacturers are as follows:

Seagate- produces some of the fastest drives today, but they are not considered the most reliable.

Western Digital (WD)- are considered the most reliable and have a convenient classification by color.

  • WD Blue- low cost general purpose discs
  • WD Green– quiet and economical (often switched off)
  • WD Black– fast and reliable
  • WD Red– for data storage systems (NAS)
  • WD Purple– for video surveillance systems
  • WD Gold- for servers
  • WD Re– for RAID arrays
  • WDSe– for scalable corporate systems

Blue - the most common drives, suitable for low-cost office and multimedia PCs. Black ones combine high speed and reliability, I recommend using them in powerful systems. The rest are designed for specific tasks.

In general, if you want cheaper and faster, then choose Seagate. If cheap and reliable - Hitachi. Fast and reliable - Western Digital from the black series.

Hybrid SSHD drives are now mainly produced by Seaagete and they are of good quality.

There are discs from other manufacturers on sale, but I recommend limiting yourself to the indicated brands, since there are fewer problems with them.

10. Manufacturers of Solid State Drives (SSDs)

Among the manufacturers of SSD drives, they have proven themselves well:

  • Samsung
  • Intel
  • Crucial
  • SanDisk
  • Plextor

More budget options include:

  • Corsair
  • GoodRAM
  • A-DATA (Premier Pro)
  • Kingston (HyperX)

11. SSD memory type

SSD drives can be built on different types of memory:

  • 3 D NAND– fast and durable
  • MLC- a good resource
  • V-NAND- average resource
  • TLC- low resource

12. Speed ​​of hard drives (HDD, SSHD)

We can find out all the parameters of SSDs we need, such as volume, speed and manufacturer, from the seller’s price list and then compare them by price.

The parameters of HDDs can be found by the model or batch number on the manufacturers' websites, but in fact it is quite difficult, since these catalogs are huge, they have a lot of incomprehensible parameters, which are called differently by each manufacturer, also in English. Therefore, I offer you another method that I use myself.

There is a program for testing HDTune hard drives. It allows you to define parameters such as linear read speed and access time. There are many enthusiasts who conduct these tests and post the results on the Internet. In order to find the test results of a particular hard drive model, it is enough to enter its model number in the Google or Yandex image search, which is indicated in the seller's price list or on the drive itself in the store.

Here's what a picture with a disk test from the search looks like.

As you can see, this picture shows the average linear read speed and random access time, which we are interested in. Check only that the model number in the picture matches the model number of your drive.

In addition, according to the schedule, you can roughly determine the quality of the disc. An uneven schedule with large jumps and high access time indirectly indicate inaccurate low-quality disk mechanics.

A beautiful cyclical or simply uniform graph without big jumps, combined with a low access time, speaks of the exact high-quality mechanics of the disk.

Such a disc will work better, faster and last longer.

13. Optimal drive

So, what kind of disk or disk configuration to choose for a computer, depending on its purpose. In my opinion, the following configurations will be the most optimal.

  • office PC - HDD (320-500 GB)
  • entry-level multimedia PC - HDD (1 TB)
  • mid-range multimedia PC - SSD (120-128 GB) + HDD (1 TB) or SSHD (1 TB)
  • entry-level gaming PC - HDD (1 TB)
  • mid-range gaming PC - SSHD (1TB)
  • High end gaming PC – SSD (240-512GB) + HDD (1-2TB)
  • professional PC – SSD (480-1024 GB) + HDD/SSHD (2-4 TB)

14. The cost of HDD and SSD drives

In conclusion, I want to talk a little about the general principles for choosing between more or less expensive disk models.

The price of HDDs mostly depends on the capacity of the disk and slightly on the manufacturer (by 5-10%). Therefore, it is not advisable to save on the quality of HDDs. Get models from recommended manufacturers, albeit a little more expensive, as they will last longer.

The price of SSD drives, in addition to volume and speed, also depends heavily on the manufacturer. Here I can give a simple recommendation - choose the cheapest SSD drive from the list of recommended manufacturers that suits you in terms of volume and speed.

15. Links

Hard drive Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB
Hard drive Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EZEX 1 TB
A-Data Ultimate SU650 120GB Hard Drive

Today we will analyze the main points and principles of functioning of SSD technology. As you remember, in we conducted a comparative test of one SSD and two HDD drives. We considered how it looks from the inside and what main blocks it consists of.

Also - they listed the main advantages of this technology, and now we will consider the disadvantages that are inherent in it at the moment. We present the main ones in the form of a list:

  1. High (relative to HDD drives) cost of data storage, i.e. - less disk capacity we get for more money
  2. Greater vulnerability (relative to magnetic recording devices) to electrical interference and power supply problems (sudden power outage, magnetic fields, static electricity)
  3. You can not completely fill the disk (15-20% of the space should be free)
  4. The service life of the media is limited to a certain number of write cycles of its cells

But let's get it right! Let's start with what is an SSD drive and how does it work?

This is a solid state drive that uses NAND flash memory chips instead of traditional ferromagnetic platters.

NAND memory is an evolution of flash memory, the chips of which had much lower speed, durability and structurally looked more massive.

You may be interested in the fact that flash memory was developed in one of the divisions of Toshiba in 1984. The first commercial chip based on this development was released by Intel in 1988. And a year later (in 1989), the same Toshiba introduced a new type of flash memory - NAND.

At the moment there are three main options (modifications) of NAND memory:

  • SLC (single-level - Single Level Cell)
  • MLC (two-level - Multi Level Cell)
  • TLC (Three Level Cell)

The most expensive and reliable solutions are devices based on SLC chips. Why? They allow each memory cell to store only one bit of information. Unlike them, MLC and TLC chips can store two and three bits, respectively. This was made possible by using different levels of electrical charge on the gates of the memory cells.

Schematically, this can be represented as follows:


Such a multi-level structure allows a sharp increase in the capacity of chips with the same physical volume (as a result, each gigabyte is cheaper). BUT! Nothing is given for free! Therefore, MLC and TLC chips have a sharply reduced lifetime, which is directly related to the number of rewriting cycles of their cells.

For SLC, this is 100,000 erase/write cycles, for MLC - 10,000, and for TLC - only 5,000. Such a decrease in reliability is associated with the gradual destruction of the dielectric layer of the cell's floating gate due to the small reserve for changing its state under the influence of electric current. Plus, due to the fact that with each new level the task of accurately recognizing the level of an electrical signal becomes more complicated, which means that the total search time for the desired cell with data increases, and the likelihood of reading errors increases.

To combat the phenomena described above, manufacturers have to develop specialized highly intelligent control microcontrollers for SSD drives, which, in addition to I / O procedures, must write information to the media so that its flash memory chips wear out evenly and control this wear by balancing the load, also - carry out error correction, etc.

It is the controller that is the weak point, since it is more sensitive to power problems and damage to the firmware (firmware) in it can lead to the complete loss of all user data. And their correct recovery is an even more labor-intensive operation than in the case of HDD disks. Due to the fact that the data is scattered across different memory chips and it is necessary to correctly restore their original structure, and this is not easy.

Therefore, manufacturers of SSD drives regularly update the firmware of their drives and make them available for free download, finalizing and improving the algorithms of the device and preventing data loss in the event of an emergency.

Manufacturers also struggle with the wear of MLC memory cells by a method that has proven itself in magnetic disks: reserving part of their volume (10-20%) for dynamic replacement of worn cells. In the case of an HDD, this area serves as a replacement.

But we, as users, can also help our SSD drive not to waste its limited "life" resource and configure the operating system in such a way as to minimize unnecessary disk accesses.

I will show the general principles of what to do and what to try to avoid, and you will already set up your system for optimal work with a solid state drive.

For example: we know that the Windows operating system actively uses the paging file (hidden system file "pagefile.sys") during its operation. What does this mean in relation to the wear of SSD drive cells and everything we talked about above? And the fact that a separate area of ​​the system flash drive is intensively used (often overwritten with some service data that we do not need and, in fact, actively wears out)!

What can be done? Correctly! Move the paging file to another (non-SSD drive), as I did, or, with a large amount of RAM, completely abandon it (set it to "0")?

Let's move on: the defragmentation procedure is not only unnecessary for this type of device (they have the same access speed for any cell, regardless of where the final file is located), but is simply harmful. For the same reason as described above. Extra (idle) accesses to the disk only further reduce its limited resource. So - turn off the corresponding defragmentation service. Also, it would not be superfluous to disable file indexing, which is necessary for faster search, but do we use it that often?

The principle, I think, you have caught. And now I would like to show you a small program "SSD Mini Tweaker" (tweaker - optimizer), which in a similar way optimizes the operation of an SSD drive. In it, it is enough to put the checkmarks we need in front of the relevant items and click the "Apply changes" button.


The computer will restart and the changes will take effect. The program is remarkable in that it has a Russian interface and detailed help in Russian. So, at any time, you can familiarize yourself in detail with the function that you are going to disable or leave enabled.

You can download the utility. The archive contains versions for 32-bit and 64-bit systems and a help file in Russian.

Since we have devoted so much time to the issue of optimal use of the disk and the wear of its memory cells, I cannot but present you with another interesting development. The program "SSD Life Pro", the main task of which is to keep track of the time of the disk and report the approximate date of its failure.


What do we see here? The entry "FW: 1.00" is the firmware version of the disk, the occupied and free space on it, the total operating time from the first power-up and the number of starts are shown below. Also pay attention to the TRIM line (should be active), this indicates that the performance of the SSD drive will be optimal.

Below is a screenshot of the same program, but taken from the website of its developer. It shows that the disk from the Intel company correctly passed its SMART parameters to the utility, and based on them, the utility displayed an extended forecast of its state.


As you can see, the drive failure is "scheduled" for November 7, 2020 :)

If we click on the link “What do you think?” at the top of the program window, then we will go to the developer’s website and we will be able to find out (in Russian) exactly how such a calculation is made?

You can program. If it accurately shows the "life" of your disk - unsubscribe, I think all readers will be interested!

At the end of this topic, let's listen to the recommendation of the respected Intel company, which says that the ideal operating conditions for an SSD solid state drive is less than 75% full of data with a ratio of static (rarely changed) and dynamic (changed often) information - 3 to 1 . You should not use the last 10-20% of the disk space, as they are needed for the TRIM command to work correctly. To work, it needs free space to regroup data (same as for the defragmentation function). The general rule is - the more free space - the faster the device works.

At the moment, the SSD drive is ideally suited as a system partition on which the operating system and programs are installed and that's it. The data and all work on them should (if possible) take place on the second (HDD) disk. Also, solid-state drives can be effectively used on servers for caching static data.

Now, let's take a quick look at why the more expensive models of SSD solid state drives have such excellent speed qualities and how else do they differ from their "younger" counterparts?

Firstly, it is the same smart drive controller chip that can be designed as multi-channel i.e. - can write data simultaneously to each flash memory chip of the disk. As a result, the overall performance of the device will be equal to the speed of one memory chip multiplied by the number of controller channels. Well, if you simplify the situation a little :)

Also, in more expensive models, additional elements are used that are soldered onto the board. This can be, for example, a series of capacitors located near the disk's RAM chip, which ensure that data is saved from the cache memory during a power failure.

When a critical mass of bad drive cells is reached, high-quality chip firmware can completely block the SSD drive for recording functions and switch it to read-only mode, which guarantees the safety of user data (possibility) until the device completely fails.

And at the end of our article, let's touch on another interesting variety of solid state drives. These are "RAM SSD" drives. What is it?

Such hybrid devices use volatile chips to store information, which are completely identical to those used in modules. They have ultra-fast data access, read and write speeds and can be successfully used to accelerate large databases and where peak performance is needed.

Such systems are equipped with batteries to maintain operation in the absence of electricity, and more expensive models are equipped with backup systems when data is copied to HDD media.

Here's what a similar device might look like, which is defined by the operating system as a hard drive.


And here is a simpler version, made in the form of a PCI Express X1 board



As you can see, the principle of operation here is the same, but the function of flash memory chips or HDD "pancakes" is performed here by ordinary RAM modules.

Now, as promised, I want to say a few words about subjective feelings after using a solid state drive. The operating system (Windows 7) boots and shuts down noticeably faster. The same can be said about installing and running programs. Some applications are simply amazing: "Microsoft Word 2003" "shoots" in less than a second! You don’t have time to mentally prepare to work with him :) Yes, quickly, but don’t expect something phenomenal, after all, this is not a “revolution”, but an “evolution” :)

That's all I have for today. See you in the next articles!

And at the very end - what the production of NAND memory chips looks like:

Hi friends! As they said in Russia: "Every merchant praises his goods" and no matter how many articles you read about SSDs, you are unlikely to meet the same opinion. Someone read something and decided to buy a Samsung SSD, who is Toshiba, while others decided to buy an OCZ Vertex SSD at all costs or Kingston.

About a year and a half ago, my friends and I firmly decided to buy an SSD each, but everyone has them, but we don’t. Comrades asked me to test various SSDs and choose the best one.

Solid-state drives are not bought very well, so sellers of computer goods do not carry a lot of them so that they do not lie dead in the warehouse. So we also do the same, so I had at my disposal the leaders in SSD sales at that time. The most inexpensive of the entire company was the Silicon Power V70 SSD, the test of which I left for later.

In my tests, I didn’t get too sophisticated, installed an operating system on each SSD, then compared the SSD and a regular HDD in the CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD Benchmark test programs. I didn’t have to prove to anyone that an SSD is better than a regular HDD. Windows installed on an SSD solid-state drive loaded in 4 seconds, the CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD Benchmark test programs showed the complete superiority of an SSD over a conventional HDD by 3-4 and even 5 times.

I made all the tests on the trading floor and the information was available to buyers, in short, all the test SSDs were dismantled, besides, that day was good for sales, and even there was not a single SSD left in the window, well, I think I was left without a solid state drive! And then I remembered SSD Silicon Power - V70. In principle, I knew this good manufacturer from Taiwan, but still I wanted something else, such as Crucial or Plextor!

I decided to test it too at the end of the working day and after the tests I was a little surprised, the V70 turned out to be a noble solid state drive, in no way inferior to other SSDs I tested and sold during the day. And the SiSoftware Sandra program generally awarded him first place.

During the year, where it just didn’t work for me: both on a laptop and on various stationary system units and instead of a flash drive, I carried it in my pocket and dropped it on the floor, but nothing, it still works fine.

Well, okay, enough chatter, I turn to the most basic in the article, the answers to your questions on the solid state drive and at the end of the article I will give some tests proving that the SSD for installing the operating system is what the doctor ordered.

ALL your questions regarding SSDs.

1. What is the internal structure of an SSD? Based on which NAND flash: SLC, MLC or TLC to buy an SSD?

2. Which SSD manufacturer should I prefer?

3. Is the lifespan of an SSD really limited? After how many years of use will my SSD fail?

4. Does the user face the risk of losing all recorded data if the resource of the memory chips is exceeded?

5. Is it worth disabling hibernation, paging file, recovery, disk indexing service, disk defragmentation, Prefetch technology, transfer cache to extend the life of SSD browser and temporary files directory to another hard drive, and so on?

6. How much faster is an SSD than a regular hard drive?

Comparing different SSDs in terms of performance

It is important to know not only the average sequential read and write speed on the SSD, but also hushed up by all SSD manufacturers - the random write speed in blocks of 512 kb and 4 kb! Disk activity for most users occurs mainly in such areas!

When comparing SSDs from different manufacturers in the AS SSD Benchmark program, we can see the following result, for example:

My Silicon Power V70 SSD showed:

Sequential read/write speed 431 MB/s (read), 124 MB/s (write)

The speed in reading and writing in blocks of 4 KB, it turned out 16 MB/s (read), 61 MB/s (write)

Third party SSD. As you can see, the high (higher than my SSD) sequential read and write speed of 484 MB / s (read), 299 MB / s (write), but there is a subsidence in reading / writing in 4 KB blocks, namely 17 MB/s (read), 53 MB/s (write).This means that this SSD is not faster than mine., although the box of this SSD may show off the numbers 500 MB / s.

SSD test in SiSoftware Sandra

My SSD ranked first among similar models

More and more users are purchasing SSD drives for installation in a PC. They are used in parallel with or instead of the HDD. Most often, the operating system is installed on the SSD drive, and files are stored on the HDD. It is with this placement that you can experience a multiple increase in the speed and performance of your computer.

Solid state drives have many advantages over hard drives. Therefore, you need to know how to choose the right SSD drive for your computer.

What does it represent?

A hard disk drive (HDD) is that device in your computer that stores all data (programs, movies, images, music ... the Windows operating system itself, Mac OS, Linux, etc.) and it looks like this ...

Information on the hard drive is written (and read) by reversing the cells on magnetic plates that rotate at a wild speed. Above the plates (and between them) is worn, like a frightened, special carriage with a reading head.

Since the HDD is in constant rotation, it works with a certain noise (buzzing, crackling), this is especially noticeable when copying large files and starting programs and the system, when the hard drive is under maximum load. In addition, this is a very “thin” device and is afraid of even a simple swaying during its operation, not to mention falling to the floor, for example (reading heads will meet spinning disks, which will lead to the loss of stored information on the disk).

Now consider a solid state drive (SSD). This is the same information storage device, but based not on rotating magnetic disks, but on memory chips, as mentioned above. The device is similar to a large flash drive.

Nothing spinning, moving and buzzing - the SSD drive is absolutely silent! Plus - just a crazy speed of writing and reading data!

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

  • high speed of reading and writing data and performance;
  • low heat generation and power consumption;
  • no noise due to the absence of moving parts;
  • small dimensions;
  • high resistance to mechanical damage (overloads up to 1500g), magnetic fields, temperature extremes;
  • stability of data reading time irrespective of memory fragmentation.

Disadvantages:

  • limited number of rewriting cycles (1,000 - 100,000 times);
  • high price;
  • exposure to electrical damage;
  • the risk of complete loss of information without the possibility of its recovery.

And now in more detail:

Benefits of an SSD drive

1. Work speed

This is the most important advantage of SSD drives! After replacing the old hard drive with a flash drive, the computer acquires multiple acceleration due to the high speed of data transfer.

Before the advent of SSD drives, the hard drive was the slowest device in a computer. It, with its ancient technology from the last century, incredibly slowed down the enthusiasm for a fast processor and nimble RAM.

2. Noise level=0 dB

Logically - there are no moving parts. In addition, these drives do not get hot during their operation, so the cooling coolers turn on less often and work less intensively (creating noise).

3. Shock and vibration resistance

This is confirmed by numerous videos with tests of these devices - the connected and working SSD was shaken, dropped to the floor, knocked on it ... and it continued to work quietly! If you are purchasing an SSD drive for yourself, and not for testing, we advise you not to repeat these experiments, but limit yourself to watching videos on Youtube.

4. Light weight

Not an outstanding factor, of course, but still - hard drives are heavier than their modern competitors.

5. Low power consumption

I'll dispense with the numbers - the battery life of my old laptop has increased by more than one hour.

Disadvantages of an SSD drive

1. High cost

This is at the same time the most deterrent for users, but it is also very temporary - the prices for such drives are constantly and rapidly falling.

2. Limited number of overwrite cycles

A typical, average SSD based on flash memory with MLC technology is capable of approximately 10,000 read / write cycles of information. But the more expensive type of SLC memory can already live 10 times longer (100,000 rewrite cycles).

In both cases, the flash drive can easily work out for at least 3 years! This is just the average life cycle of a home computer, after which there is a configuration update, replacement of components with more modern ones.

Progress does not stand still and tadpoles from manufacturing companies have already come up with new technologies that significantly increase the lifetime of SSD drives. For example, RAM SSD or FRAM technology, where the resource, although limited, is practically unattainable in real life (up to 40 years in continuous read / write mode).

3. The impossibility of recovering deleted information

No special utility can recover deleted information from an SSD drive. Such programs simply do not exist.

If, with a large power surge in a regular hard drive, only the controller burns out in 80% of cases, then in SSD drives this controller is located on the board itself, along with memory chips, and the entire drive burns out - hello to the family photo album.

This danger is practically reduced to zero in laptops and when using an uninterruptible power supply.

Main Features

If you are buying an SSD to install on a computer, pay attention to its main characteristics.

Volume

When buying an SSD drive, first of all, pay attention to the volume and purpose of use. If you are purchasing it only for OS installation, choose a device with at least 60 GB of memory.

Today's gamers prefer to install games on solid state drives in order to increase performance. If you are one of them, then you need a 120 GB variant.

If you're purchasing an SSD instead of a hard drive, consider how much information is stored on your computer. But in this case, the capacity of the SSD disk should not be less than 250 GB.

Important! The cost of a solid state drive directly depends on the volume. Therefore, if your budget is limited, use an SSD to install the operating system, and an HDD for data storage.

Form Factor

Most modern models of SSD drives are sold in a 2.5-inch form factor and are built into a protective box. Because of this, they look like classic hard drives of the same size.

Good to know! To install a 2.5-inch SSD drive in a standard 3.5-inch mount inside the PC case, special adapters are used. Some case models have 2.5-inch form factor jacks.

There are 1.8-inch and smaller SSDs on the market that are used in compact devices.

Connection interface

Solid state drives have several options for connection interfaces:

  • SATA II;
  • SATA III;
  • PCIe;
  • mSATA;
  • PCIe+M.2.

The most common option is to connect using a SATA connector. There are still SATA II models on the market. They are no longer relevant, but even if you purchase such a device, thanks to the backward compatibility of the SATA interface, it will work with a motherboard that supports SATA III.

When using a PCIe SSD, you may need to install drivers, but the data transfer speed will be higher than with a SATA connection. But there are not always drivers for Mac OS, Linux and the like - you should pay attention to this when choosing.

mSATA models are used on compact devices, but work on the same principle as the standard SATA interface.

The M.2 or NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor) models are a continuation of the development of the mSATA line. They have smaller dimensions and greater layout possibilities for digital equipment manufacturers.

Read/write speed

The higher this value, the more productive the computer. Average speed indicators:

  • reading 450-550 Mb/s;
  • recording 350-550 Mb/s.

Manufacturers may indicate not the actual, but the maximum read / write speed. To find out the real numbers, look on the Internet for reviews and reviews of the model you are interested in.

In addition, pay attention to the access time. This is the time it takes the disk to find the information required by the program or OS. The standard indicator is 10-19 ms. But since SSDs have no moving parts, they are significantly faster than HDDs.

Memory type and time to failure

There are several types of memory cells used in SSD drives:

  • MLC (Multi Level Cell);
  • SLC (Single Level Cell);
  • TLC (Three Level Cell);
  • 3D V-NAND.

MLC is the most common type, which allows you to store two bits of information in one cell. It has a relatively small resource of rewriting cycles (3,000 - 5,000), but a lower cost, due to which this type of cell is used for mass production of solid state drives.

The SLC type stores only one bit of data per cell. These microcircuits are characterized by long lifetime (up to 100,000 write cycles), high data transfer rate, and minimal access time. But due to the high cost and small amount of data storage, they are used for server and industrial solutions.

The TLC type stores three bits of data. The main advantage is the low cost of production. Among the disadvantages: the number of rewriting cycles is 1,000 - 5,000 repetitions, and the read / write speed is significantly lower than the first two types of microcircuits.

Healthy! Recently, manufacturers have managed to increase the lifetime of TLC disks up to 3,000 rewriting cycles.

3D V-NAND models use 32-layer flash memory instead of standard MLC or TLC chips. The microchip has a three-dimensional structure, due to which the amount of recorded data per unit area is much higher. This increases the reliability of information storage by 2-10 times.

IOPS

An important factor is IOPS (the number of input / output operations per second), the higher this indicator, the faster the drive will work with a large amount of files.

memory chip

Memory chips are divided into two main types MLC and SLC. The cost of SLC chips is much higher and the service life is on average 10 times longer than that of MLC memory chips, but with proper operation, the service life of drives based on MLC memory chips is at least 3 years.

Controller

This is the most important part of SSD drives. The controller controls the operation of the entire drive, distributes data, monitors the wear of memory cells and evenly distributes the load. I recommend giving preference to time-tested and well-proven controllers from SandForce, Intel, Indilinx, Marvell.

SSD memory capacity

It will be most practical to use an SSD only to host the operating system, and it is better to store all data (movies, music, etc.) on a second hard drive. With this option, it is enough to buy a disk with a size of ~ 60 GB. Thus, you can save a lot and get the same acceleration of your computer (in addition, the life of the drive will increase).

Again, I will give my solution as an example - special containers for hard drives are sold on the network (very inexpensively), which are inserted into a laptop in 2 minutes instead of an optical CD drive (which I used a couple of times in four years). Here's a great solution for you - the old disk in place of the drive, and the brand new SSD in place of the regular hard drive. It couldn't have been better.

And finally, a couple of interesting facts:

Why is a hard drive often called a hard drive? Back in the early 1960s, IBM released one of the first hard drives and the number of this development was 30 - 30, which coincided with the designation of the popular rifled weapon Winchester (Winchester), so such a slang name has taken root to all hard drives.

Why exactly hard disk? The main elements of these devices are several round aluminum or non-crystalline glassy plates. Unlike floppy disks (floppy disks), they cannot be bent, so they called it a hard disk.

TRIM function

The most important additional feature for a solid state drive is TRIM (garbage collection). It is as follows.

Information on the SSD is first written to free cells. If the disk writes data to a cell that was previously used, it first clears it (unlike the HDD, where data is written over the existing information). If the model does not support TRIM, it clears the cell just before writing new information, which slows down this operation.

If the solid state drive supports TRIM, it receives a command from the OS to delete the data in the cell and clears them not before overwriting, but during the “idle” of the disk. This is done in the background. This keeps the write speed at the level specified by the manufacturer.

Important! The TRIM feature must be supported by the operating system.

hidden area

This area is not accessible to the user and is used to replace failed cells. In high-quality solid-state drives, it is up to 30% of the volume of the device. But some manufacturers, in order to reduce the cost of an SSD drive, reduce it by up to 10%, thereby increasing the amount of storage available to the user.

The flip side of this trick is that the hidden area is used by the TRIM function. If its volume is small, it will not be enough for background data transfer, which is why at an SSD “load” level of 80-90%, the write speed will drop sharply.

Bus bandwidth

So, when choosing a flash drive, the speed of reading and writing data is also of paramount importance. The higher this speed, the better. But you should also remember about the bus bandwidth of your computer, or rather, the motherboard.

If your laptop or desktop computer is very old, there is no point in buying an expensive and fast SSD drive. He just won't be able to work even at half his capacity.

To make it clearer, I will announce the bandwidth of various buses (data transfer interface):

IDE (PATA) - 1000 Mbps. This is a very ancient interface for connecting devices to the motherboard. To connect an SSD drive to such a bus, you need a special adapter. The meaning of using the described disks in this case is absolute zero.

SATA - 1500 Mbit/s. More fun, but not too much.

SATA2 - 3000 Mbit/s. The most common tire at the moment. With such a bus, for example, my drive works at half its capacity. He needs...

SATA3 - 6000 Mbit/s. This is a completely different matter! This is where the SSD drive will show itself in all its glory.

So, before buying, find out what kind of bus you have on the motherboard, as well as which one the drive itself supports, and make a decision on the appropriateness of the purchase.

Here, for example, how I chose (and what guided me) my HyperX 3K 120 GB. The read speed is 555 MB/s and the data write speed is 510 MB/s. This drive in my laptop now works at exactly half of its capabilities (SATA2), but exactly twice as fast as a regular hard drive.

Over time, he will migrate to the children's gaming computer, where there is SATA3, and he will demonstrate there all his power and all the speed of work without limiting factors (outdated, slow data transfer interfaces).

We conclude: if you have a SATA2 bus in your computer and you do not plan to use the disk in another (more powerful and modern) computer - buy a disk with a bandwidth of no more than 300 MB / s, which will be significantly cheaper and at the same time twice as fast as your current hard drive.