With all the buzz about solid state, you’d think it was a brand new technology. In fact, solid state storage technology has been changing the way consumers communicate, create and share information for more than a quarter of a century. What’s new now is the way business and technology trends are influencing the adoption of new solid state storage technology designs throughout computing environments.

What Is A Solid State Drive
Solid state is an electrical term that refers to electronic circuitry that is built entirely out of semiconductors. The term was originally used to define those electronics such as a transistor radio that used semiconductors rather than vacuum tubes in its construction. Most all electronics that we have today are built around semiconductors and chips. In terms of a SSD, it refers to the fact that the primary storage medium is through semiconductors rather than a mechanically spinning magnetic media such as a hard drive.

Total cost of ownership—that’s the real value proposition for solid state storage. Although still in the early stage, solid state storage solutions can offer:

• Lower power consumption compared to hard drives
• Improved performance
• Improved environmental balance

But also know that solid state storage technology can present its own set of challenges:

• Lower life expectancy – Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC, while high endurance cells may have an endurance of 1–5 million write cycles – HOWEVER many log files, file allocation tables, and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this over the lifetime of a computer.
• Lower capacities – most SSDs are significantly smaller than HDDs.
• DRAM-based SSDs – require more power than hard disks, when operating; and they still use power when the computer is turned off, while hard disks do not.

The ideal use for SSDs is either in light weight portable applications, where more rugged and lighter weight drives are needed, or on systems that need very fast smaller temporary storage (such as a Photoshop Scratch disk)

Solid State Drive Cautions:

• Solid State Drives DO NOT require defragmentation. It may decrease the lifespan of the drive.
• Turn off or disable any applications or utilities that defragment the SSD – Antivirus, Anti Spyware, Optimize Utilities, etc. or set them to not defragment your SSD.
   

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