Recently, solid-state drives have been increasingly installed on computers and laptops. So what is SSD disk? In simple terms, this is a huge flash drive, only with faster read and write parameters. There is not a single mechanical part in an SSD. It consists only of microcircuits. Hard drives have a large amount of memory, but low speed, and solid-state drives, with a low capacity, have speeds several times faster than HDDs.
The number of magnetized particles storing information bits can be reduced by highlighting each bit. This ensures that the disc head always recognizes the correct signals. Thanks to 2D magnetic recording technology, the transmission signal can be easily distinguished from background noise.
Backward compatibility has its drawbacks
The company prepared quick guide about this question. It has three generations, the last of which is still in use today. The first two digits are the width and the rest are the length. However, it is important to remember that this is not the only compatibility factor. It is a technology designed from the ground up for the fast semiconductor environments of the future. It features low latency and allows more operations per second with less CPU consumption.
Features of work
Let's take a look at how HDD and SSD work when copying or reading small files. The smaller the file size, the greater the difference in speed between the hard drive and the solid state drive.
Just imagine that hDD this is a notebook with some information. And to find and add this information, you need to leaf through the notebook. And an SSD is a sheet of paper with data in full view. Accordingly, he will find information much faster.
When purchasing an M. disk, pay attention. Some media are additionally equipped with a heatsink, which lowers temperatures and therefore improves work efficiency. They are mistakenly duplicated by people who do not have the proper knowledge. In practice, it turns out that ordinary users don't have to worry about anything, and semiconductor drives outperform the capacity of hard drives.
However, due to the different types of flash memory used by manufacturers, the life of media has also become important. In practice, it turns out that the disks work fine even after the value has been exceeded twice. How are memory cells consumed? This allows you to maintain the same number of erase and write cycles across all memory segments, resulting in longer disk life. When it reaches the limit of a write cycle in one memory location, it is marked as lost. The information in it is copied so-called. spare area, a dedicated area with a pool of spare cells.
HDD spends a lot of time on moving the read heads, on finding the necessary sectors on the magnetic plates. The SSD simply gives you the information you need. This happens when the system starts up, when copying or reading several thousand small files (eg photos). Therefore, the speed of this type of media is several tens of times higher than that of HDD. Programs and the system itself installed on a solid state drive will start much faster than on a regular hard drive.
For consumer drives, this area is about 7 percent. total available capacity. This process is controlled by the disk controller and is performed automatically. To ensure readability of the files, each backup copy the data in the backup cells is stored in a special mapping table, in which the disk "knows" where all the parts of the file are.
It is worth noting that even the lowest score recorded in the test is a value not available for traditional discs. How different are disc endurance? The latter comes in three different versions, which differ in terms of data recording, price and endurance. The density is 2 bits per cell.
It is best to buy SSDs from manufacturers that have proven themselves on the positive side in the production of these products. These firms include Crucial, Kingston, Corsair, Samsung, Tohiba, Transcend, Intel, OCZ, SunDisk. You shouldn't buy solid state drives from Chinese brands or little-known companies. These are: Apacer, Silicon Power, A-Data.
Since most SSDs have a small amount of memory, but very high performance, they serve mainly to install an operating system and programs on them, to increase their boot speed.
Read on to find sharp details. It is the oldest storage technology on modern computer using magnetic trays for storing information. The performance improvement is seen from the first system initialization and will save you many hours of accumulated wait when launching applications, saving files or restarting the system.
What this concept means: slowest component computing system is the one that dictates the minimum speed of the system. So let's see what advantages the two technologies have, because each has arguments that you must choose.
disadvantages
The main disadvantages of solid state drives include their cost. Even SSDs with a small volume are much more expensive than conventional hard drives, and their prices fluctuate in different directions every year.
An SSD is a flash memory made up of thousands of cells that tend to wear out. Basically, wear occurs when writing information to disk. Cells fail much more slowly when read. Conventionally, it is believed that the smaller the capacity of a solid-state drive, the more reliable it is, since it does not have additional microcircuits and consumes less power. But this is all in theory, and has not been confirmed in any way.
Another disadvantage of SSDs is the inability to recover data when deleted. If you accidentally have a power surge, then only a small board will burn in the hard disk, and the information that remains on the magnetic plates can be restored. Solid state drive breaks down completely with all the files on it.
Physical dimensions and connection standards
So let's see which pipes each represents. In the case of low power models, things are not so bad. Things are bound to change over time as investment in flash drives continues to grow. Everything is good and beautiful, but what do we do when we open the page and see that there are many options in terms of the connection interface and the storage block size?
While there are several possible measurements, some of the non-standard ones listed in the table above are the most common in practice. The above are of course valid for any update operation: make sure the new component is compatible with your current system.
pros
Read and write speed is one of the most important parameters of an SSD. For solid state drives, this speed ranges from 150 to 560 mbps. A medium-priced disk can have read and write speeds in the range of 450 MB / s Random access time is not counted for solid-state drives, since it is 0.1 - 0.2 ms. SSDs have a SATA - 3 connector, therefore, the same connector should be installed on the motherboard. Otherwise, the disc will not work at full capacity. Also, a solid state drive is much stronger than usual. hard disk... He is not afraid of blows or
falls.
No Compromise: Hybrid and Alternative Solutions
Since there is the option of hybrid hard drives, models that include in addition to the generous spaces offered magnetic media data, and the amount of flash memory that is used to store the most accessible data in order to quickly deliver it to the applications that need it.
However, we need to consider the available connectors in the system that need to be replanted. The second reboot took 6 seconds less than the first. The most accessible files take precedence over others, whether they are part of the operating system or programs.
So what should you choose?
Now you have an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat SSD drives are. Let's see when it makes sense to apply them.
Only one 320 GB hard disk can be installed for an office computer. If you play games or have a professional computer, then the best option install two disks. SSD sizes 60 - 128 GB. for installing programs, and operating system, and a hard drive of 1 - 2 TB. If you use a laptop as an addition to your main computer, then it will be enough to install a hard drive with a capacity of up to 500 GB. If the laptop is the main computer, then it would be best to use a 750 GB HDD in it - and higher, depending on what purpose it is used for.
And the reason is simple: most programs of this type do not use the same file from one test to another, but a new file, and thus the cache is not used during the test. Even if some people get the impression that there is only technology on the market, we actually have more to do. But being relative new technology, the world shouldn't be so informed.
This is what we will find when setting up powerful servers. Increased shock resistance. The card had a big problem with this. Often the mechanical part of a rigid part is damaged by impacts. They were then put into a laptop and worked flawlessly. Perhaps even the envious, because they cannot afford such a gadget. But with the advent of new controllers, the work has changed.
SSDs are quite expensive, so don't buy an SSD larger than 128GB. Moreover, it is not intended to store information. A 128 GB. quite enough for normal operation of the operating system.
Defragmentation is useless, even dangerous. Newer operating systems even do this automatically, every few days, 7 days by default. Read more about this order here. Less energy, space, weight, etc. in addition, the weight is small, it is a toy with a size of ~ 100 grams, temperature resistance is quite high up to 70 degrees.
Even if he is praised, we must also criticize him. It also has several downsides. There are programs that try to recover files, but this does not work. Another aspect is price. Moreover, he cannot win. However, we will not be able to notice the difference in performance between ourselves.
The abbreviation SSD stands for "Solid-State Drive", which roughly translates as a solid-state drive or drive.
We, of course, will consider the main characteristics of such devices in this article, but I would like to do this, starting from a real example. Such a case recently, very by the way, presented itself to me, since my working hard drive began to show clear signs of dying (a wedge appeared, which manifested itself in a spontaneous freeze of the entire system, accompanied by a characteristic click).
These speeds are much higher. At the moment, the technology is too new and too expensive for the average user. The offer began to diversify through online stores. Take a look at the controller, look at the brand info, don't compare speeds to specs.
Many times manufacturers force the controller to pull at higher speeds. Meanwhile, more stable and cheaper versions have appeared. Recently, Kingston decided to change the controller. Obviously, not everyone likes it. As a disadvantage, the highest price will still be high.
It coincided that they bought one for our company (for trial) SSD drive (it is also a solid-state hard drive) and, for the reason stated above, it turned out to be mine! :)
Well, it would be a sin not to take advantage of such a moment and not to carry out a comparative test of this SSD hard drive and its predecessors, based on the.
The logging function causes some recording activity, but not much. Otherwise, there is a danger that operating system will stop loading. It would be better if she acted daily. The next order will make the required move. Limit the use of the swap partition.
Avoid defragmenting and preventing fragmentation
It is very important that the value is correct, so we will check the receipt using the following command. If things are different, this is how we do it. The safe way to disable it is the following command. Although fragmentation does not have a significant impact on performance, it is good to avoid it. In particular, it would be nice not to completely handle the partition space, but rather to stop at 80%.
We unpacked the new product, huddling around it with our entire IT department :)
From the label on the box it follows that this is a solid-state drive from Plextor, with a capacity of 64 gigabytes, equipped with an external SATA interface and a maximum transfer rate of 6Gb / s (gigabits per second). This will be somewhere the theoretical maximum of the third generation SATA interface (600 megabytes per second).
Many people choose external hard drives for storing holiday photos or videos made for children of the family or pets. Occasionally, however, accidents happen and personal files are at risk. Sometimes you can minimize your chances by choosing.
Physical shock and improper hard drive disconnection can lead to data loss, which can lead to frustration in a situation where people who have lost an important part of their lives must understand. Data recovery experts say that there are often solutions even when they seem impossible.
Remember the speed of interfaces and their history we talked about in?
The form factor of our solid state drive, as seen from its size and lettering on the box, is 2.5 inches. That is, it can be installed with equal success as in desktop computersand in laptops. More expensive models come with a special mount that allows you to install the device in 3.5-inch bays. In our case, the set includes only a sealed plastic package :)
The most important thing to remember is that the hard drive functions perfectly in this case, and logical operations are performed on it through the fault of the user. In this case, changing the electrical part is the solution, but it is very important that this process does not need to be checked at home, as it can lead to damage to the reading heads or permanent loss of data. Firmware defect - This type of defect usually occurs due to voltage fluctuations or manufacturing defects. Firmware is a hardware component of the hard drive and is located on the surface of the platters in the administrative area, where only specialized hardware can access.
Here are a couple of photos so you can estimate the dimensions of the SSD hard drive:
In thickness, it is a little less than a centimeter. And here - in comparison with a "regular" hard drive:
Moreover, the mass of the SSD is absolutely incomparable with its "older" brother. Compared to him, he is a fluff. After all, there are no moving mechanical parts that need to be protected from external influences, which means there is no point in making a thick metal base case. The outer cover is aluminum and plastic, therefore the weight is appropriate: 75 grams. The supply voltage of the device is five volts.
Hard disk firmware is quite complex, consisting of several modules, and unlike firmware motherboardthat can be easily upgraded, it is impossible to achieve. Mechanical defect. In the case of external hard drives, it is the most common type of defect and is usually caused by the user's fault: dropping, brewing, contact with water. Because they are portable, they are more susceptible to physical shock than other storage devices. In the case of mechanical defects, the most common problems are: bolt readheads, bent readheads, scratching the surface of a plate or multiple surfaces, blocking or damaging the motor.
The estimated uptime (as claimed by the manufacturer) is 1,500,000 hours, and the official warranty on the box is three years. From which we can conclude that the drive must be sufficiently reliable. Is it really? Time will tell:)
It's not a rewarding business to talk about value in a rapidly changing market like the IT market, but at the time of this writing, the price this decision was in the region of eighty dollars.
External hard drives are extremely sensitive to shock. Particular attention should be paid to how we detach the hard drive, how we transport and store it. The microprocessor manages the writing and reading of data without using the mechanical part, so it does not generate noise and is much faster.
But they are a little more expensive and the question is whether it's worth it. The easiest way is to compare the two technologies with a hard drive. Well, today it remains to discuss this question and answer this question. My first post discussed and how reducing this can significantly improve system performance.
In general, what is a solid-state SSD drive? This is a large USB stick (equipped with a fast SATA interface) with quick access, a cache of a certain amount and a specialized controller for data transmission and processing, which is responsible for the optimal operation of the media.
Solid State Drive, unlike HDD (Hard Disk Drive), have a number of obvious advantages (along with implicit disadvantages), but first things first. Let's start with a pleasant one :)
After all, cost is all that really matters, right? Coming from the era of the hard drive, these have been practical rules of thumb and simple ways compare the costs of hard drives. Hard drives are mechanical devices that wear out and you have likely experienced hard drive failures. These failures happen unexpectedly and catastrophically in the data center as well as for personal use.
However, this endurance comes at a higher cost - prohibitively expensive in many cases. Endurance ensures that memory blocks in a flash device wear evenly by distributing all write operations evenly, resulting in increased endurance.
SSD hard drives are characterized by:
- short access time to data (regardless of their fragmentation and location)
- the same speed for any sequence of selection, since the organization of information storage here is a matrix of flash memory cells from which the selection takes place.
- lack of moving parts, which means - complete absence of noise
- resistance to various vibrations and physical influences
- lower (relative to HDD drives up to 30%) power consumption
This is how the disassembled SSD looks like:
At the top left is a microcircuit random access memory (DDR3), which is the drive's cache, and on the right is the Western Digital device control controller. At the bottom are eight fast NAND flash memory chips (eight gigabytes each), which add up to the total capacity of this solid state drive - 64 gigabytes.
Here is another photo to fix the image, so to speak :)
Let's say a few words about the memory chip itself. This is not exactly a cache, more precisely, it caches (remembers) data, but not at all to speed up the operation of the device, and information about allocation tables and erased / occupied cells is dynamically written here. The addresses of worn-out flash memory cells are also recorded here, where recording can no longer be carried out.
Now, regarding the controller: its main task (as we already mentioned) is to provide read and write operations, but it is also responsible for managing the data allocation structure. According to his wear control tables, he "looks" in which cells have already been recorded, and in which ones have not yet, and equalizes these indicators.
Thus, the controller ensures the longest life of our SSD drive, forcing its cells to wear out evenly. Therefore, a properly programmed and tuned controller can significantly change both individual speed indicators and the durability of the device as a whole.
So, let's continue the review! On the back of the box of our solid-state SSD drive, we found an interesting table from the point of view of information content:
What useful information can we glean here? First: an indication of the size of the memory chip (cache) of the disk. We see that for models with a capacity of 64 gigabytes it is equal to 128 megabytes, for a capacity of 128 gigabytes it is 256 megabytes and for 256 gigabytes - 512 megabytes of superfast RAM, which is used for the needs of the carrier itself.
Section "Performance" (performance) shows us the value of the linear (sequential) speed reading from a solid state drive - "Read Speed" (520 megabytes per second) and speed records to the "Write Speed" disk (90, 200 and 390 megabytes per second for different SSD capacities, respectively).
Also pay attention to the interesting inscription at the very bottom, which says that in the programs for determining the performance (benchmarks) "ATTO Disk" and "Crystal Disk Mark" the disk subsystem shows the best performance index.
Let's test this moment! And let's start with the "CrystalDiskMark" program.
But first, a little background. The fact is that for more complete testing, I collected (connected) a small collection of hard drives on my working computer, which, by a lucky coincidence, were within my reach and it would be just a shame not to "drive" them :)
So, in our testing are taking part:
- plextor 64Gb M5S SATA Solid State SSD - New
- Seagate Barracuda with one terabyte SATA 7200 rpm - almost new
- Western Digital 320 Gb IDE 7200 rpm - new
Note: abbreviation RPM stands for (round per minute - revolutions per minute) and characterizes the speed of the hard disk spindle. In general, the more the better. 5400 and 7200 rpm are considered standard values. There are high-speed devices at 10,000 and 15,000 rpm, but they are extremely expensive and are not used in home or office computers.
As you can see, the company has chosen a very decent one. Discs are not worn out. And I specifically wanted to test drives with different data transfer interfaces. Remember about working with, we talked about in a separate article?
Testing an SSD drive
So, let's start our testing with "CrystalDiskMark".
We launch the program and see such a simple window:
The photo above shows the result of testing our SSD drive. Let's look at the interface of this simple, but useful program based on them.
In the upper left corner there is a button labeled "All", by clicking on which the testing procedure is launched. To the right of it is a drop-down list through which we can specify the number of "passes" of the test before displaying the final result. By default, the number is "5". Next is the size of the test file that will be written to disk. It is by the results of its recording that the program will judge the linear (sequential) speeds of write and read operations to the medium. To the right is a list from which you can select the hard drive itself, which we will test.
For me, as you can see, the SSD drive acts as a system partition (drive "C").
So, we figured out the main parameters. Now let's look at the results themselves. We have two columns here: “ Read MB / s"(Reading speed, megabytes per second)," Write MB / s " (write speed, megabytes per second).
On the first line, as you can see, our solid-state drive produced 237 megabytes per second (read) and 102 megabytes per second (write). This is for a 100 megabyte file. The second and third lines show the speeds when working with small portions of data (512 and 4 kilobytes, respectively). The general principle here is: what more files and the smaller the size of each of them, the more time the hard drive needs for any operations on them.
Let's remember (write down) these values \u200b\u200band choose another disk (E) for testing. I will have a SATA hard drive with a volume of one terabyte. And here are the results he showed:
As you can see, they are an order of magnitude lower than those of a hard disk SSD, but they are also not bad at all!
Now let's see what our third participant will show - a 320 gigabyte hard drive with an IDE interface?
You can compare the results obtained with each other and draw conclusions based on them. You can also download "Crystal Disk Mark" from our website and run the test yourself on your system, comparing its results with those that I received.
Just want to bring to your attention one more program that is designed specifically to measure the speed of SSD drives. It has a few more useful functions in its arsenal. Let's take a closer look at it:
The photo above shows the results of the test of my disk for reading (Read) and writing (Write). Notice the selection at the top left. Here we can see the firmware version of the controller - 1.00 and check if our operating system has aligned (mapped) the solid state drive correctly? If it says "OK" then everything is fine.
The "Access Time" field shows us the time taken by the device to access the requested data. The "Score" line displays the general summary indicators of the measurement results. The so-called "parrots". Remember how in the cartoon? :)
The program can build a graph for us for clarity. To do this, go to the "Tools" menu and select "Compression-Benchmark".
After that, the following window will start:
In it, we will need to click the "Start" button and wait for the end of the chart construction procedure. You can download this utility if you like.
Well? Does God love the Trinity? :) I can not help but introduce you to another great program for testing and obtaining comprehensive information about storage devices installed in the computer. The program is called "HD Tune Pro" and is also remarkable in that it has a Russified interface, so it's a pleasure to work with it.
This is what one of its tabs looks like with a benchmark (performance assessment) of the disk system:
The photo above is the test results for my Plextor Solid State Hard Drive. Why is this program so good? The fact that it shows not only numerical values, but also draws us a graph in real time, by which we can judge the change of certain parameters in dynamics and observe some kind of trend. We will clearly see this in the following screenshots.
What do we see here? Maximum, minimum and average read speed values \u200b\u200b(we got similar values \u200b\u200bin the previous test). New parameter - disk access time and load percentage. There is a separate switch for measuring the speed of reading and writing to disk.
Well, let's compare the performance with our terabyte SATA drive:
As you can see, the difference is obvious! Especially interesting is the graph, which shows the difference from the read speed at the beginning of the disk and towards the end (the dynamics of the process). If we look at the graph of a solid-state SSD drive, we will see that its "cardiogram" is practically flat and there are no drops in speed.
Also pay attention to such a function as the temperature indicator of the hard drive, available in this program for HDD disks.
So, let's explore our "dinosaur" from "Western Digital" :)
As expected, the main indicators are much more modest, but I was surprised by the stability of the read speed almost over the entire surface of the disc. Only at the very end did it noticeably decrease. Also here we see the lowest CPU load among all of our subjects.
Let's move on to the next tab of the HD Tune Pro program, which is called Random Access. The photo below shows the number of input-output operations that our solid-state hard drive produces per second for data blocks of different sizes (IOPS - Input Output Per Second), the average and maximum data access times and their read speed.
Let's look at the results of the Seagate hard drive (Seagate 1 terabyte):
See how big the difference is in the results? Let's see what Western Digital (320 gigabytes IDE) will demonstrate:
You can see everything for yourself. In general, HD Tune Pro is very good and useful. In addition to the "benchmarks" themselves, it can show us our drive (they are located on the "Health" tab). You can also enable real-time disk monitoring and scan the drive surface for the presence (bad blocks).
You can carry out your own testing or compare this program with my indicators.
Let's look at one more tab of the program - "File Benchmark". Its principle of operation is somewhat similar to that used in "CrystalDiskMark", which we reviewed in the middle of the article.
The test is launched by clicking the "Start" button, but before that you can configure its parameters: select the device that we will test, indicate the size of the file to be written to the disk and what type of data will it contain?
On the left we see the already familiar graph-cardiogram of work, and below - the read and write speed indicators, as well as the number of input-output operations performed by the drive.
Let's compare the graph above, which was for an SSD hard drive with our terabyte device:
Below is our "WD".
Here, I think, there is nothing unexpected and this drive rightfully takes its honorable third place :) The winner, in all respects, is the SSD from Plextor.
Since the article is already quite voluminous, I decided to break it into two parts and talk about the shortcomings, general principles of functioning of solid-state drives based on flash memory, and my subjective feelings from using such a device, which will soon appear on our website ...
A small video on how SSD drives are made: