What’s all the fuss about Solid State Drives anyway?

You may have over heard the tech head in your office talk about them, these SSD’s! but what are they?

SSD stands for Solid State Drive.

SSDs have been around for a while but are now really making head way as they have come done in price. They are the replacement for the old trusty hard drive. But what’s so special about them and why should you be replacing all the drives in your company computers or laptops with them?

Unlike our old hard drives SSD’s have no moving parts this gives you serious benefits:

• Faster boot times.
• Quicker access to files and folders.
• No moving parts – longer life.
• Lower power consumption.
• Less heat generated.

Faster boot time of your computers, which is a challenge for most companies. Not having moving parts means that it also allows quicker access to files and folders as there is no moving arm that has to find the right place first. A standard drive takes between 5000 and 10000 micro seconds to access data where as a SSD takes between 35 to 100 micro seconds to do the same. So that is nearly 100 times faster. For an IT tech like me it makes it a no brainer – all drives in my company are SSD’s. If we buy in a new computer for internal use, or for a client that doesn’t have an SSD in the first job the Tech department does is recommend and change out.

Another key factors is that SSDs don’t generate the same heat like as those tradition hard drives. Standard drives have rotating discs and moving arms, which cause the drive to generate heat. The heat generated not only raises the temperature with in your computer system but over time the heat will help degrade the life of the hard drive – which can lead to loss or corruption of data.

A SSD uses flash memory to store data which provides better performance and reliability over a standard hard drive. In addition, SSD’s consume less power so in a standard computer over time your energy bill will be less. More importantly with your laptop, using SSDs will mean your battery will last you longer (which is a bonus for all of us that travel and work on the go).

The only downside that I see to and SSD is that the price is higher than a normal hard drive. A 512Gb SSD will set you back about £150 whereas the standard hard drive 500Gb costs approximately £50. 

The question to ask yourself is: Does the benefit of a faster, cooler and less power-hungry system out way the additional cost?

May the SSD be with you!