Concept in Definition ABC

The evolution of technology has reached the units of storage with an acronym well known by most users, but whose real meaning is much more unknown: SSD.

These acronyms correspond to Solid-State Drive in English, what in Spanish would be Solid State Disks, although its way of connection to the PC can be the same SATA (once the IDE has been discontinued in the most modern machines) that standard hard drives use.

That is why, in addition to being mounted on the newest computers in novel formats for mass storage such as Mini PCIe, we also find this type of memory in a Format similar in size to typical 2.5-inch drives in laptops.

Flash technology to the rescue

The revolution of SSD drives has been possible thanks to flash technology, which allows the storage of binary data in memories that continue to maintain the information once the power is cut off. electric current.

We say that they use another technology because the way to store the data is not with spaces on a magnetic surface that are polarized in one direction or another according to we want to represent a 0 or a 1 and they are read with a head, like vinyl records with the needle, but in flash technology they are read and written by pulses electrical

These flash memories are derived from EEPROMs (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), which allowed reading and to write by means of an ultraviolet ray. The drawback of this technology is that it is only possible to act on a cell memory at the same time, a limitation that is overcome in flash technology.

By being able to read several cells simultaneously, a greater amount of information is managed at a time given, with what the working speeds with respect to the EEPROM memories increase vertiginously.

Benefits over traditional magnetic technologies

• They are faster than magnetic hard drives, sometimes much faster. On comparison, they have practically no latency, and their access times are much better.
• They do not contain moving parts, so they are more resistant to shocks and falls. Magnetic hard drives, on the other hand, run a great risk of surface scratches when the reading / stylus collides with it.writing.
• They are really quiet.
• They dissipate less heat and, due to the flexibility of the format, the storage units can be built in the way and size that best suits the device, being able to integrate more components and, therefore, producing smaller machines.
• We can manufacture units with amounts of memory ranging from a few megabytes to a large number of gigabytes.

Disadvantages

• They have a lower life cycle than their magnetic counterparts, since, by their nature, they have a limited number of writing cycles in each element that makes up their surface. This is serious in such a way that we can lose, unexpectedly, all the information stored on an SSD drive.
• Currently, their price is still higher than that of traditional magnetic units, a difference that is accentuated as storage space grows.

Photos: iStock - PeopleImages / ljubaphoto