A solid state drive, also known as a solid state disk, is a storage device for computers that utilizes solid state memory to store information. Solid state drives provide access to information in the same way that a standard hard drive would, including standards such as SATA, USB and more.
The main difference between a solid state drive and a traditional hard drive is that a solid state drive has no moving parts inside. You know when you first turn on your computer; you hear the whirr of your hard drive spinning up, then a few friendly clicks to let you know it’s functioning. This is because your hard drive has plates that spin continuously and heads that move in and out along the plates to read and record information.
Solid state drives instead use microchips, much like the ones used in your system RAM, to record information. But unlike your system RAM, a solid state drive will not lose the information stored on it when the power is turned off. Solid state drives are also much like susceptible to things like physical jolts and are also much faster than traditional hard drives, as you never have to wait on moving parts to store or retrieve data.
The only downside to solid state drives is their cost compared to traditional hard drives. They are more expensive per GB than a regular hard drive, which is the only reason they haven’t become the new de facto standard. Hybrid drives have been created which combine large traditional hard drives with smaller solid state drives. The solid state drive is used as a cache to serve frequently used files, improving system performance dramatically.
Solid state drives are available in common form factors, which allow them to easily replace any existing hard drive. They are a lot like USB flash drives you may be familiar with, only on a much larger scale. This makes solid state drives a fast, reliable internal or external hard drive solution.