Solid State Drives

In the past decade or so, solid-statedrives or SSDs have become the top choice among computer owners owing to faster read/write speeds compared to the traditional hard disk drive or HDD.

Alternatively referred to as “semiconductor storage drive”, SSDs are basically storage media that use integrated circuit assemblies to store data, sans the spinning disks and moveable parts that largely make up the operational dynamic of old school HDDs.

But as relatively established as this aspect to SSDs are, there’s still some confusion about them owing to the prevalence of different SSD types. If you’re among the many who’s confused about SSDs and SSD types, read on.

SSDs VS. HDDs

As already mentioned, SSDs are storage media that don’t have the mechanical components that HDDs do. This makes them more robust in terms of read/write performance, and are largely more efficient in terms of power requirements.

SSDs function much like RAM or computer memory. Unlike RAM, however, SSDs are non-volatile, whereas RAMs are volatile – which means that RAM lose the data saved in them when a system is shut down. With SSDs, even after a system is shut down, they still keep data that’s saved in them.

Many computer owners have been switching to SSDs, mostly by supplementing their desktops or laptops with SSD-and-HDD combos. In such cases, an SSD drive is used to store a computer’s operating system, while a traditional HDD is used to store personal files, backups and other data.

The combo results in faster operating system boot up and faster application loading times, whilst affording users with quick access to their files that’re stored in an HDD.

SSD Types

There are different types of SSDs in the market, and the types are largely the reason why there’s some confusion over SSDs. This is because SSD types don’t just differ in terms of performance but also work with different types of connectors.

SSDs can be classified into four types based on their connectors, either

SATA, mSATA,

NGFF M.2 or NVMe

PCIe M.2.