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Internal solid state drive. What to choose: hard drive or solid state drive? Comparison with HDD

Hello friends! As they said in Russia: “Every merchant praises their product” and no matter how many different articles you read about SSDs, you are unlikely to find the same opinion. Someone read something and decided to buy a Samsung SSD, who is Toshiba, while others decided to buy the SSZ OCZ Vertex orKingston

About a year and a half ago, my friends and I firmly decided to buy SSDs using a solid-state drive, but everyone has them, but we don’t. Comrades asked me to test various SSDs and choose the best one.

SSDs do not buy very well, so sellers of computer products do not carry a lot of them, so as not to be dead weight in a warehouse. Here we are also doing the same, so at my disposal were the sales leaders of SSD at that time. The most inexpensive of the whole company was the Silicon Power V70 SSD, the test of which I left for later.

In my tests, I was not particularly sophisticated, installed an operating system on each SSD, then compared the SSD and the usual HDD in the CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD Benchmark test programs. I didn’t have to prove specifically that an SSD is better than a regular HDD. The Windows installed on the SSD SSD loaded in 4 seconds, the test programs CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD Benchmark showed the complete superiority of SSDs over ordinary HDDs by 3-4 or even 5 times.

I performed all the tests on the trading floor and the information was available to customers, in short, all the test SSDs were taken apart, moreover, that day was good for sales and there weren’t even a single SSD in the window, well, I think I was left without a solid-state drive! And then I remembered the SSD Silicon Power - V70. In principle, I knew this good manufacturer from Taiwan, but still I wanted something else, such as Crucial or Plextor!

I also decided to test it at the end of the working day, and after the tests I was a little surprised, the V70 turned out to be a noble solid-state drive that is in no way inferior to the other SSDs tested and sold by me during the day. And the SiSoftware Sandra program generally awarded him first place.

During the year where he just didn’t work for me: on a laptop and on various stationary system units and instead of a flash drive, I dragged him in my pocket and dropped it on the floor, but nothing still works fine.

Oh well, enough talk, I’m going to the most basic in the article, answering your questions about the solid state drive and at the end of the article I’ll give some tests proving that the SSD for installing the operating system is what the doctor ordered.

ALL your questions regarding SSD solid state drives.

1. What is the internal structure of the SSD? Based on which NAND flash memory: SLC, MLC or TLC to buy SSD?

2. Which SSD manufacturer to prefer?

3. Are SSD SSDs really limited in life? After how many years of use will my SSD fail?

4. Does the user face the loss of all recorded data if the resource of memory chips is exceeded?

5. Is it worth it to extend the life of the SSD, turn off hibernation, swap file, recovery, disk indexing service, disk defragmentation, Prefetch technology, transfer cache browser and temporary files directory to another hard drive and so on?

6. How much faster is an SSD of a regular hard drive?

Compare different SSDs for performance

It is important to know not only the average speed of sequential reading and writing to SSDs, but also hushed up by all manufacturers of SSDs - random write speed in blocks of 512 kb and 4 kb! Disk activity for most users occurs mainly in such areas!

When comparing SSDs of different manufacturers in the AS SSD Benchmark program, we can see such a result, for example:

My Silicon Power V70 SSD showed:

Sequential read and write speeds of 431 MB / s (read), 124 MB / s (write)

Speed \u200b\u200bin reading and writing in blocks of 4 Kb, it turned out 16 MB / s (read), 61 MB / s (write)

SSD from another manufacturer. As you can see, the high (higher than that of my SSD) sequential read and write speeds of 484 MB / s (read), 299 MB / s (write), but there is a drawdown in reading / writing in 4 KB blocks, namely 17 MB / s (read), 53 MB / s (write).This means that this SSD is not faster than mine, although the box of this SSD may show off numbers of 500 MB / s.

SSD Test in SiSoftware Sandra

My SSD took first place among similar models

ALL your questions regarding SSD solid state drives.

1. What is the internal structure of the SSD? Based on which NAND flash memory: SLC, MLC or TLC to buy SSD?

2. Which SSD manufacturer to prefer?

3. Are SSD SSDs really limited in life? After how many years of use will my SSD fail?

4. Does the user face the loss of all recorded data if the resource of memory chips is exceeded?

6. How much faster is an SSD of a regular hard drive?

Compare different SSDs for performance

When comparing SSDs of different manufacturers in the AS SSD Benchmark program, we can see such a result, for example:

My Silicon Power V70 SSD showed:

Sequential read and write speeds of 431 MB / s (read), 124 MB / s (write)

Speed \u200b\u200bin reading and writing in blocks of 4 Kb, it turned out 16 MB / s (read), 61 MB / s (write)

SSD Test in SiSoftware Sandra

My SSD took first place among similar models

Today in the market of computer components, hard drives are represented by two main types - SDD and HDD. Which one is better? We will deal with this issue in detail.

HDD - classic hard drive

HDD - This is a classic hard drive, which is a box where round magnetic plates and reading heads are placed. Data is stored on magnetic plates, and reading heads, respectively, read this data. The principle of operation of the HDD is similar to a gramophone, except that the spindle speed is much faster. The HDD spindle spins magnetized plates at 5400 and 7200 rpm. These are the most common HDD spindle speeds for user computers. The spindle speed can be much more - for example, 10,000 or more revolutions per minute, but these are already the server equipment standards.

HDD inside / forumrostov.ru

What gives HDD spindle speed? This indicator is often measured by the speed of reading and writing by a hard disk of data - the higher the spindle speed, the greater the speed of reading and writing data. But this is not entirely true, because its performance is affected by its other indicators, such as recording density and random access time.

The higher the recording density, the faster the HDD will be. The recording density of modern HDDs is 100-150 GB / sq. Inch. With a random access indicator, the opposite is true, because this is the time during which the hard drive will perform a data read or write operation on any part of the magnetic plate. Therefore, the shorter the time, the better. The range of this parameter, as a rule, is from 2.5 to 16 ms.

Thus, in computer operation, the difference between two HDDs with a spindle speed of 5400 and 7200 may not be noticeable.

HDD also differ in physical dimensions and in the technical specifications of the models are indicated according to their width. This is a size of 3.5 inches - the standard HDD size for assembling a PC - and 2.5 inches - the size of an HDD for laptops.

SSD - new format hard disk

SSD - in the technical specifications of computer devices, you can also find its other name “solid-state drive” - in fact, it is a volumetric flash drive with a huge read and write speed compared to HDD. SSD is 3-4 times faster than HDD. It will take no more than 10 seconds to fully boot Windows installed on the SSD, while this operating system will load on the HDD for two minutes.

What is the secret of SSD performance? HDD, for example, when starting Windows, spends time searching for sectors on the magnetic plate and moving the read heads. When starting the exact same version of Windows with exactly the same functionality at startup, the SSD simply reads the data from the specific matrix block where this data is located. On the SSD-drive, the operating system, programs, and individual files run faster.

SSD inside / fotkidepo.ru

SSDs do not add much weight to laptops, because they weigh no more than 100 g. While a 2.5-inch HDD with a weight of 700-800 g obviously does not facilitate the daily transfer of the device.

Unlike HDDs, SSDs are not afraid of bumps and falls. But, accidentally dropping a laptop, you can add some trouble - and to replace the HDD, and data recovery.

SSDs work silently, while a good high-speed HDD can even interfere with sleep if you leave your computer turned on for the night.

Speaking of data recovery, in this matter the SSD is losing the HDD. Restoring data from an SSD is problematic. If, for example, a power surge occurs, the SSD will burn out completely and all data will be destroyed. But in the HDD in exactly the same case only a small board will burn, while all the data will remain on the magnetic plates. If desired, IT specialists will be able to recover this data. The same applies to the restoration of previously deleted data by the user using special software. On most SSDs, recovering deleted files after emptying the recycle bin will fail. But manufacturers of SSDs are already working on this issue, moreover, some models of solid state drives may not physically clear the matrix blocks from the recorded data at the moment of receipt of the user command, but do it later, when it becomes necessary.

But this is far from the most vulnerable point of solid state drives. Their disadvantages are also significant, as are the advantages over the HDD.

The first is the price. SSDs are very expensive. For the price of an SSD with a capacity of 60 GB, you can buy a good HDD for 1 TB of disk space.

Secondly, this is a small amount - an SSD with a capacity of 512 MB is rarely seen on the market for computer components, much more common standards are volumes of 128 GB or 60 GB. As you can see, such layouts do not make the SSD a full-fledged device for the user's needs, and if we are not talking about ultra-thin ultrabook, for a file storage anyway a laptop or PC will have to be understaffed HDD. Using only SSD for data storage, we repeat, can result in a decent amount of money.

Thirdly, SSDs have a clearly defined usage resource. You can overwrite data on a solid state drive up to 10,000 times. The HDD does not have such restrictions, and it is rare when users change the hard drive for this reason. As a rule, this is either mechanical damage, or overheating, or modernization. Given the high cost of an SSD, a computer device must be equipped with at least 8 GB of RAM so that you can disable the Windows page file. Indeed, the constant overwriting of data in this file will help the SSD resource run out faster.

SSD or HDD: which is better to choose?

What is better HDD or SSD? In the presence of free cash, of course, an SSD as part of a PC assembly or in a laptop will not hurt. Despite all the technical flaws of the solid state drive, it is beneficial to use it as a system partition for Windows. If the revenues so far are not particularly conducive to serious spending money, a good high-speed HDD is a much more practical option.

Main photo: HDD next to SSD / 123rf.com

Until recently, storage media used the principle of magnetic recording. In the 70-80s of the past century, they were floppy disks, which then gave way to more reliable and capacious hard drives. This state of affairs was observed until the end of the last decade, until SSDs appeared on the market - solid-state electronic media, devoid of moving mechanical parts and characterized by high speed.

At first they were notable for their small capacity and high price. The service life of these devices also left much to be desired. Therefore, when asked why an SSD drive is needed, there was no single answer. With a volume of 32 or 64 GB and a price of several hundred dollars, these media seemed to most of them an expensive toy. A slight advantage in write / read speed (up to 1.5-2 times) made SSDs interesting only for “geeks” who want to get the most performance out of their PC.

But progress does not stand still, and soon more capacious and affordable solid-state drives came on sale, which attracted the attention of a wide audience. The question of why you need an SSD hard drive has become more relevant than ever.

Design features, advantages of SSD drives

To understand why to put an SSD drive, you need to understand the main advantages of such drives. It does not hurt to know the main disadvantages of these gadgets.

HDD and SSD design

The main difference between SSDs and traditional hard drives is a different device and work principle. Unlike HDD, the design of solid-state media does not have any mechanical components. For data recording, arrays of high-speed flash memory are used, access to which is provided by the internal controller. This design gives the SSD a number of advantages not available to the classic HDD.

Noiselessness. Due to the lack of moving elements, the SSD does not make sounds during operation.
Shake Resistance. Unlike HDD, where during the process of moving the device or dropping the magnetic head can scratch the surface of the disk (thereby damaging it and the data stored), SSD is less vulnerable. Of course, as a result of a blow to the case, contact between the components may break, but the drive hidden inside the computer or laptop is adequately protected from this.
Low power consumption. The main energy consumer in the railway is the motor, which drives the disks. It rotates at a speed of 5, 7 or 10 thousand revolutions per minute and consumes up to 95% of all the electricity supplied to the drive. Thus, an SSD is up to 10 times more economical, which is especially true for thin laptops.
High read / write speed. The magnetic data recording method has reached the limit of excellence. More than 100-200 Mb / s in sequential recording mode, it is impossible to get from the hard drive without reducing the service life, increasing the size, increasing power consumption and increasing prices. SSD flash memory does not have this minus and works up to 10 times faster.
Stable speed. If the information on a traditional hard drive is recorded on physically different disks (their design is HDD 2 or more) or their sections - there is a delay caused by the need to move the read head. The speed of operation is therefore significantly reduced. The similar delay when reading the cells of the SSD flash memory array is millionths of a second and does not significantly affect the overall performance.

SSD disadvantages

With all the benefits, talking about the perfection of SSD technology is too early to say. The disadvantages of such drives are not enough low cost (3-10 times more expensive than HDD in terms of 1 GB of memory) and limited service life (from 10 thousand to 1 million rewrite cycles per cell). This indicator in HDD is theoretically unlimited, and in practice reaches tens of millions of cycles.

Another disadvantage of SSDs is the electrical vulnerability: when a high voltage is applied due to a power supply malfunction, both the controller and the flash drive burn out.

SSD drives - why are they needed

Knowing the main advantages of SSDs, answer the question “Why do I need an SSD drive in a computer?” much easier. The purchase of this gadget will allow, first of all, to increase the comfort of using the gadget and extend its battery life (if it is a portable PC). High speed will positively affect the OS boot time, opening documents and game performance.

Why do I need an SSD drive in a laptop

If it comes to a laptop, then the question "why do I need an SSD" can generally not be discussed. In any case, the purchase of a solid-state medium will not get worse. Energy-efficient technology will allow you to achieve longer battery life on a single charge, the absence of high voltage in the supply circuits minimizes the risk of a disk failing irreparably if the PSU breaks down, and the amount of memory in a portable PC does not play such an important role as in a desktop one.

As for the shorter working life, the experience of service centers shows that the laptop’s hard drive fails and undergoes premature wear several times more often and faster than in a stationary computer. This is due, first of all, to the significantly larger number of dynamic loads that the device is exposed to during transportation and operation. If you accidentally drop a laptop from your knees at the moment when data is being written to the HDD, there is a high risk of damage to the drive, even if the computer was not visually damaged. Therefore, it is highly likely that the SSD will serve even more than the railway.

Why SSD drive in a gaming PC

Gamers are the main part of SSD buyers at the moment. The use of a solid-state drive allows them to achieve better performance in three-dimensional games by reducing their launch time. Loading levels, inventory, surrounding objects and other elements of the game world from files stored on disk also occurs significantly (up to 10 times) faster.

There is a noticeable difference in seamless games such as Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, or Fallout. The inner world in them is located on one huge map, and to reduce the load on the iron, only part of it is stored in RAM. This may be the situation, for example, within a radius of 200 meters around the character. As you move through the terrain, moving objects from RAM are removed, and in their place objects are written in the direction of which the player approaches. Thus, reading from the hard drive is ongoing and it is easy to guess that submitting data to the SSD processor will allow much faster and more efficient than HDD.

For gamers, the high cost of a gigabyte in an SSD is not critical, since games take up relatively little space. If a collection of 100 films in FullHD quality weighs about 1 TB, the same Fallout 4 requires less than 50 GB of free space.

Why do I need an SSD hard drive in a multimedia computer?

In a home PC used for web surfing and multimedia tasks (watching movies, listening to music), an SSD drive is needed the least. The need for such a disc can only be experienced by connoisseurs of content as Blue-Ray. Wait until the 40 GB movie is written to the PC's memory for a long time (about 10 minutes). But storing a selection of your favorite movie in FullHD, QHD or 4K UHD requires a capacious SSD of 500, 1000 or 2000 GB. The cost of such drives exceeds a thousand dollars, and not everyone can afford such an acquisition.

For undemanding PC users, a large SSD in a multimedia computer without any special need. The capabilities of classic (magnetic) hard drives are enough to meet the needs of 99% of users. However, a small (64 - 128 GB) SSD used as a system media (for installing Windows) will not be out of place. It will significantly increase the overall performance of the PC, reduce the noise level of the system unit and save energy.

A big fan of high-quality Chinese technology, a fan of clear screens. Supporter of healthy competition between manufacturers. He is closely following the news in the world of smartphones, processors, video cards and other hardware.

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are new and fast and a good alternative to HDDs, but do you need one? Read on as we demystified the solid state drive. The last few years there has been a noticeable increase in SSD output and lower prices (although of course you can’t compare prices between SSDs and traditional hard drives in this way).

What is an SSD? What are some ways you can benefit from purchasing an SSD? What needs to be done differently with SSD? Read on to find out all about solid state drives.

What is a solid state drive?

You may find it hard to believe, but SSDs are actually pretty old technology. SSDs have been in various forms for decades, the very first to be RAM-based and quite expensive, and installed only appear in ultra-high-end and super computers. In the 1990s, the first SSDs were made on the basis of flash drives, but they were again too expensive for the consumer market and were hardly noticeable outside the specialized computer circles. Throughout the 2000s, flash memory prices continued to fall, and by the end of the decade, consumer solid state drives appeared on the personal computer market.

So what is a solid state drive? Here, you must first highlight what a traditional hard disk (HDD) is. A hard drive is a set of metal plates coated with ferromagnetic material that rotate on a spindle. Recording on the surface of magnetic plates is carried out by a tiny mechanical handle (drive lever) with a very thin sting (head). Data is saved when the polarity of the magnetic bits on the surface of the plates changes. This, of course, is a little more complicated, but suffice it to say that everything is done here by analogy with an automatic record player, his hand is looking for a track on the record, as well as the handle of the drive and the head of the hard drive are looking for data. When you want to write or read data from magnetic hard drives, the plates rotate, the hand searches, and finds the data. This is the same mechanical process as it is digital.

SSDs, by contrast, do not have moving parts. Although the scales are different, and the storage area on the HDD is much larger, and the solid-state drive has much more in common with a simple portable flash drive than with a mechanical hard drive (and, of course, much more than ever, with a tape recorder! ) The vast majority of SSDs on the market are NAND flash memory, a type of non-volatile memory that doesn't need electricity to save data (unlike the RAM in your computer, which loses its saved data as soon as it is powered up) disconnected). NAND memory also provides a significant increase in speed much more than mechanical hard drives, since the time wasted when the plates spin and do not look for data is removed from the equation.

Comparison of Solid State Drives with Traditional Hard Drives

It’s always good to know what solid state drives are, but it’s even more useful to compare them with traditional hard drives that you have been using for many years. Let's look at a few key differences in pointwise comparison.

Spin-time: SSDs do not have “spin” time; The drive has no moving parts. Hard drives have different spin times (usually a few seconds); when you hear a click-whirrrrrr for a minute or two when you boot up your computer or when accessing rarely used files, you always hear the hard drive spin.

Access time and data latency: SSDs find data very quickly and, as a rule, are 80-100 times faster than hard drives; skipping mechanical spinning plates and searching for data, so they can access data almost instantly. The quick search of data on hard drives is prevented by the physical movement of the armature and the rotation of the plates.

Noise: SSDs are silent; the absence of moving parts means the absence of noise. Hard drives range from fairly quiet to very strong sound levels.

Reliability: separate manufacturing issues aside (bad drives, firmware, issues, etc.) SSDs have come forward in terms of physical reliability. The vast majority of hard drive crashes resulting from mechanical damage; at some point after x tens of thousands of hours of operation, the mechanical drive simply wears out. In the sense, the read / write cycle of hard drives is limited.

Solid state drives, on the other hand, have a limited number of write cycles. This limited number of write cycles is the main issue to judge solid-state drives, but the reality is that the average computer user is unlikely to be able to do many read and write cycles on an SSD. Intel's X25-M, for example, can process 20 GB of data for 5 years without a glitch. How often do you erase and write 20GB of data on the main disk on a daily basis?

In addition, SSDs can be used further; when the NAND modules have reached the end of their write cycles, they become read-only. The disk then reads data from the damaged sector and overwrites it on a new part of the disk. Apart from lightning or a catastrophic design flaw, the SSD's failure is more like “old age, why it breaks in my bones!” Rather than a sharp “boom!” bearings in the HDD! ” and his stop. You will have enough time to back up your data and to purchase a new drive.

Power Consumption: SSDs consume 30-60% less power than traditional hard drives. Saving 6 or 10 watts seems to be not much, but within a year or two on a very used car it all fits together.

Cost: SSDs are not cheap. Traditional hard drive prices fell about five cents per gigabyte of data. SSDs are much cheaper than they were 10-20 years ago (when they were limited to special computer systems), but they are still quite expensive. Depending on size and model, you can expect to pay somewhere between $ 1.25- $ 2.00 per GB.

SSD Care

In managing the operating system, saving data, and interacting with your computer, the only difference that you will notice as an end user while an SSD drive is running is to increase speed. When it comes to caring for your drive, there are a few rules that are crucial.

Do not defragment the disk. Defragmentation is useless for SSD and reduces its lifespan. Defragmentation is a technique that finds pieces of files and optimizes them by placing them on the platters of hard drives to reduce search time and wear on the disk. SSDs do not have plates and have almost instant search time. Their defragmentation eats up more recording cycles. By default, in Windows 7, defragmentation is disabled for SSDs.

Disable indexing services: if your OS has any search, a tool such as the indexing service has been added, turn it off. Reading time on an SSD is fast, which you don’t really need to create a file index, and the process of indexing a disk and writing an index will be slow on an SSD.

Your OS must support cropping. The TRIM command allows your OS to talk to the SSD and tell it which blocks are no longer in use. With this team, performance on SSDs will rapidly degrade. In this publication, for Windows 7, Mac OS x 10.6.6+, and Linux with a 2.6.33+ kernel, support the TRIM command. And registry hacks and additional programs exist to modify earlier versions of the OS, such as Windows XP, to semi-support the TRIM command. Your SSD should be paired with a modern OS for maximum performance.

Leave part of the disk empty. Check the specifications for your device, most manufacturers recommend keeping 10-20% empty. This empty space helps the alignment algorithm (they transfer data through the NAND memory of the modules in order to minimize the total wear on the disk and provide a long service life and optimal drive characteristics). If you leave too little space, alignment algorithms over time will lead to premature wear on the disk.

Media to the second disk: SSDs are expensive, so there is no point in storing your massive media files on your expensive SSD drive. You can pick up traditional 1 TB hard drives, and use a large additional drive (if possible) to store large and static files (for example, movies, music collections and other multimedia files).

Investing in memory: Compared to the cost of solid-state drives, RAM is cheap. The more RAM you have installed, the fewer write cycles to disk. You can extend the life of your expensive SSD, ensuring that your system has adequate RAM.

Solid state drive for me?

At the moment, you have a history lesson, point-by-point comparison, and some tips for keeping your SSD in great shape, but do you need an SSD? Check all that apply and prepare for the following:

Almost instant download times: You can switch from cold downloads to browse the web in seconds with an SSD; You could often get into the same window in more than a minute with a traditional hard drive.
You want quick access for common applications and games: we have said this many times, but SSDs are super-fast.
You want a quieter and less gluttonous computer: as emphasized above, SSDs are silent and consume significantly less power.
You can use two disks: one for the OS and one for the files: if you only store a few family photos and a CD-Rip or two, you will need a more affordable traditional HDD for storing large files.
You are ready to pay a significant amount for an SSD: this is the largest amount per gigabyte to date, but at the same time the performance gain is huge at 3000%.
If your list looks more complete than empty, and you want to get speed while working, then SSD is for you!