Solid-state drives VS traditional hard drives

The interface specifications, definitions, functions and usage methods of solid-state drives are almost the same as ordinary hard drives, and the shape and size are basically the same as those of ordinary 2.5-inch hard drives.

Solid-state drives have the characteristics of fast read and write, light weight, low energy consumption and small size that traditional mechanical hard drives do not have, and their disadvantages are also obvious. Although IDC believes that SSD has entered the mainstream of the storage market, its price is still relatively high, its capacity is low, and once the hardware is damaged, it is difficult to recover data; and some people think that the durability (lifespan) of solid-state drives is relatively short.

Several factors that affect the performance of solid-state drives are: the main control chip, NAND flash media and firmware. Under the same conditions as above, which interface is used may also affect the performance of the SSD.

The mainstream interface is SATA (including 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s) interfaces, and SSDs with PCIe 3.0 interfaces are also available.

Due to the difference in design and data reading and writing principles between SSD and ordinary disks, their internal structures are also very different. Generally speaking, solid-state drives (SSDs) are relatively simple in structure and can also be disassembled; so most of the articles we usually see about SSD performance evaluations are accompanied by internal disassembly diagrams of SSDs.

In contrast to ordinary mechanical disks, the data reading and writing relies on the airflow generated by the high-speed rotation of the disk to hold up the magnetic head, so that the magnetic head is infinitely close to the disk without contact, and the stepping motor drives the magnetic head to change lanes data read. Therefore, its internal structure is relatively complex and precise, and disassembly is generally not allowed. Once disassembled manually, it is very likely to cause damage and the disk will not work properly. This is the reason why we rarely see the disassembly diagram of the disk when evaluating the disk.