Welcome to Solid State Drives 101. Solid state, this is everyone, everyone, solid state. Is it hot in here? Solid state drives will replace traditional hard drives as the technology of choice. Why? Sit down, drink your tea, and we'll get right to it.

First of all, we must note that traditional hard drives are not perfect, and because we humans are never satisfied with anything, we felt the need to develop something better. This is known as progress. If you've been intimate with the innards of a hard disk, you will know that they consist of a set of read/write heads and a bunch of platters (silver shiny disks) which contain the data stored. Hard disks are very prone to error if your kids think your laptop is a shot put or other projectile, since those read/write heads are hovering above the platters at a very tiny fraction of an inch, so close that looks like it is touching the disk to the naked eye. They can last a while, but a lot of factors can limit the life of your drives. Heat, dust, electrical surges, prolonged vibrations, magnets, and too much Rock Band in the vicinity can all limit or end the life of a hard drive. With the amount of data flying in and out of a hard drive these days at record speeds -- can you say Bit Torrent? -- even when your PC is idling and downloading during the night, hard drives never get a break, until they break. Data is increasingly important in our knowledge-based world, so reliability is paramount, not to mention keeping up with the Joneses.

While thinking about the next big idea in storage, companies like Samsung, SanDisk, and Intel have been developing a few ideas that will fix these classic problems with hard drives, or at least make them better short term while the bigger guns are being built. The first new storage idea of note is the hybrid drive. The theory is that if you can use non-volatile flash memory (similar to a USB thumb drive) to take the load off the hard disk for the most frequent and intensive tasks, you will extend the life of the overall drive. It is a terrific achievement especially when coupled with perpendicular recording technology, but solid aims to take over the job from even the barely released hybrids.

 

What is solid state drive technology?

The USB stick or thumb drive you probably carry around to work, family gatherings, or if a geek, on dates and DMV waiting lines is the basic idea of a SSD drive. Storage manufacturers are packaging the flash memory a little differently, to fit in a PC enclosure with a power cable instead of a USB enabled package. The real benefit isn't the connection type or how the system interacts with the drive, it is the drive's physical composition that brings all the awesomeness. Solid state has no moving parts and it is non-volatile, meaning it retains information when turned off, just like a flash drive. It relies on power to positively or negatively charge a cell, so there is no spin-up of the drive platters, because there are no platters. SSD offers the best of today's reliability, durability and overall value in storage systems, far more than hard drives.

Solid state technology comes in a few flavors. They are primarily Single Level Cell (SLC) or Multi-Level Cell (MLC). The key differences of these methods of storage are that Single-Level Cell stores data using a single voltage which provides faster transfer speeds at a higher manufacturing cost and lower power consumption with higher cell endurance and longevity. Multi-Level Cell -- as you might imagine -- is the exact opposite sporting multiple voltages, lower cost, slower transfer speed, and a higher BER, or Bit Error Ratio. Although the difference in technologies may not be readily apparent when you're actually out there buying a new drive, we are obsessing here, so go with it.

Beyond the distinction of SLC or MLC, there is much techno-babble to explain how the technology actually works, including a method of information transfer called quantum tunneling. Suffice it to say that it is complicated, but it works. The many ideas bundled together that make SSD work provide much less concern about environmental factors, heat, dust, etc. because those no longer have anywhere near the same detrimental effect. In fact, the military and those serving in the military have used solid state drives for a while now, albeit the expensive government-subsidized kind.

 

SSD drive pros and cons

Pros:

• Not affected by vibration, humidity, air pressure, temperature
• Much faster seek time, due to no drive spin-up -- nearly double that of traditional drives
• Virtually zero sound, making it much quieter
• Based on non-volatile flash memory so computer boot-up time would be a thing of the past
• The Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface (NVMHCI) Working Group is already working to foster standards and develop an API
• Should be available via the PCI Express bus resulting from NVMHCI's work
• Better security, since file portions are not left behind when erasing

Cons:

• More expensive, averaging about $9 more per gigabyte
• Negatively affected by magnetic fields or electrostatic discharge
• Can lose data if power is severed during data transfer

There is no question that the price will need to decrease before too many drives go out the door for businesses and consumers, as well as some other unique challenges that will need to be addressed before widespread adoption truly begins, but all in all SSD offers a lot of positive improvements for our future and is getting a lot of attention.

 

Who is leading the SSD charge?

Initially, Toshiba and Samsung had developed a 1GB SSD chip in 2005, and later the same year, Samsung churned out the world's first 2GB chip. Intel, Microsoft, and other big names have joined the fray to help the fledgling new technology come to fruition. In early 2008 SanDisk released their 12GB and 32GB chips, which started to gain more traction for the spec. One of the most notable inclusions of SSD in a consumer product thus far is Apple's sexy new MacBook Air, that optionally comes with an SSD drive clocking in at 128GB for an extra $800 or so. The price has already come down some from the 64GB model they announced mere months ago. Additionally, Apple recently announced that their new line of both MacBooks and MacBook Pros will have optional SSD configurations as well.

SSD is on the rise and will likely be the next big thing in storage. With faster data access, non-volatile storage, increased durability and reliability, less noise, and less maintenance of failing hard drives, SSD technology has a lot to offer. Not to mention the freedom to rock out as hard as possible without nearby fragile drives hampering your style. SSD is here to stay and we couldn't be happier. It has us completely obsessed.