What should I know before buying SSD/Solid state drive?
Solid state drive is abbreviated as SSD. Many have gained popularity as they are much faster than traditional hard drives and are now affordable. We have another detailed article on SSD Price , you can find it in the SSD category. Even though it has been widely disrupted in European countries for many years, it was not much prevalent in our country because of the extra price. Since the price is within reach in all regions, in recent years, the number of Solid State Drive users is constantly increasing due to the fact that SSDs are available at low prices in our country like other countries.
However, since the technology is relatively new and less popular, many people still have many questions, misconceptions, and dilemmas about Solid State Drive. Today’s article is to clear them. At least the following things we should know about Solid State Drive.
- SSD basics and limitations of conventional hard drives.
- Basic types of SSDs, pros and cons of each
- Whether your system will work with your SSD of choice
- DRAM Cache, Host Memory Buffer
‘A A A B’ of SSD
Full form of SSD is Solid State Drive. We all commonly know hard drive as hard disk. Its data exchange, read and write method is also related to a disk.
It consists of a disk and a read-write head, this disk rotates to read and write data and the read-write head moves to different positions based on where the data is being read or written and where it is coming from.
Because there are some mechanical There are parts that need to rotate all the time and that is why it is not possible to read and write data very quickly through hard disk and the possibility and path of improvement in this technology is very small. And if you press too much, if you need to read and write many files at the same time, the speed of the hard drive is not as expected. Because mechanical parts reach multiple locations simultaneously, it becomes impossible or difficult to read and write data there. That’s why we often encounter ‘slow’/hang’/loading issues. CLICK HERE
The main difference between an SSD and a hard drive is that it doesn’t have any rotating magnetic disks or anything like that. The materials we use are very similar to the RAM or modern pen drives. Semiconductor chips are used instead of disks. But we know that the data stored in RAM is temporary, the data vanishes when the system is turned off. But here non-volatile flash memory is used to store data permanently. Data is kept in flash memory called NAND Flash. Different types of this NAND have been released and improved over time. There are several differences based on form factor, protocol, lane of data transmission which are discussed later.
Why buy SSD-
SSDs can transfer data much faster than hard drives and you can (usually) use SSDs and hard drives at the same time in your system. Keeping Windows, some heavy software on Solid State Drive will speed up your work, PC will be visibly faster. You can keep your documents on hard drive, software, games, windows easily on Solid State Drive. Software launch time, game loading time, computer startup time will be greatly reduced. And when you want to copy or cut files, you will get several times more speed.
Faster than a bad Solid State Drive and a good hard drive. As the price is affordable, the system should have at least one small SSD storage. There is no fear of data becoming unreadable, damaged, destroyed by reading sketches on the disk, and there is no chance of the internal disk and head failing suddenly. In these aspects, you stay worry-free with SSD.
Basic types of SSD:
There are generally three types of Solid State Drive available in the market today 1. SATA III 2. M.2 SATA 3. M.2 NVMe
SATA III SSD
In terms of price and speed, this type will be at the very beginning. Connection system SATA CABLE (the same cable with which our conventional hard disk and DVD drives are connected). Transfer data using SATA Lane. It uses AHCI protocol and the speed of these SSDs is 600MB/S.
Benefits:
All processors, motherboards usually support it because SATA3 is a relatively old technology.
The price is relatively low
Usually, motherboards have multiple SATA ports, so many SSDs can be installed at the same time.
Substantially faster than hard drives despite being less expensive.
Disadvantages:
The slowest member of the SSD family. Tendency to slow down with long time usage or more data writes.
Latency is high, there is excess pressure, excess pressure, non-stop data exchange is not convenient.
Being SATA eliminates the hassle of a cable.
M.2 SATA SSD:
Here comes the interface change. There are no cables here, power and data are all in the same connector, just plug it into the M.2 port and the problem is over. AHCI is used as the same protocol as SATA. And LANE and SATA for data exchange. That’s why the speed is 600MBPS just like the same SATA III SSD.
Benefits:
The size is small, only the hassle is not there.
The price is similar to SATA III i.e. much lower.
Ideal SSD for laptops.
Disadvantages:
The M.2 port cannot be installed unless it is on the motherboard.
Enabling one of these SSDs in the M.2 port will automatically disable one of the SATA ports.
The speed is exactly the same as SATA III because the method of data transfer is the same. So the problems of SATA III being slow are equally applicable here.
M.2 NVMe SSD
It is arguably the most advanced SSD at the consumer level. Transfers data using PCI lanes. Uses NVMe (Non volatile memory) protocol.
Its speed can be up to 4gb/s. In the case of PCIE 4 SSD, the speed is much higher, although it is not available in the domestic market. For this you need to have PCIe GEN 3X4 port on your motherboard and support NVMe in the motherboard bios.
Benefits:
Many times faster than other types of SSD.
In all builds that read more pressure, this Solid state drive is perfect for heavy duty applications. While the SATA SSD slows down, the NVMe can handle the pressure just fine there.
Disadvantages:
Too expensive.
Many motherboards don’t support this port/bios so it won’t work.
Which type of SSD is perfect for you?
SATA:
If you are a normal PC user, browsing, listening to music, playing YouTube, watching movies, working in Word, Excel, playing light games, editing photos as a hobby in Photoshop, these are the activities of your PC. And if you regularly use software like Chrome, Antivirus, Lightroom/Photoshop, Word, Excel on your PC then perfect SATA SSD for you. 128/120 or 240/256 GB SSD drive will be enough for you if the budget is more, you will get visible change if you install Windows and the mentioned software on Solid state drive. File transfer, loading time will be reduced a lot. SATA SSD is capable of meeting your needs.
NVMe:
If you are a heavy user, rendering, editing should be done professionally. If you work a lot with heavy software, play multiplayer games, Esports games regularly or play AAA games, it will be more reasonable for you to get an NVMe SSD. No need to face the problem of slow, lag hang even under excessive pressure. Especially in the case of gamers, there is no need to face the problem of waiting for a long time to install big games. click here
Does your system support it? How logical is SATA M.2 on the desktop!
Before buying an SSD, before choosing, you should first know what the motherboard supports. First of all check whether M.2 port is supported or not. It is also important to see how much support PCIe Gen. In the case of old motherboards, if SATA II is supported instead of SATA III, SATA III will run again, but the speed will be much lower.
If you have a budget and your needs can be met by SATA SSD then it is more reasonable to get SATA III instead of m.2 SATA, in many cases you may have to spend 200/300 rupees more but you will get the same speed, again M.2 has SATA port. A SATA port will automatically turn off when plugged in. So if you are not a laptop user it is better to avoid m.2 SATA.
M.2 SATA SSDs are usually perfect for laptops. But before buying or choosing, you must know the details of your laptop model from the internet whether it has M.2 or not and whether it is NVMe or not. And what is the PCIe generation of NVMe and is it compatible with the one you are choosing.
SSD Lifespan: Slows Over Time?
SSD has a fixed life span ie after such a year it will fail or cannot read and write any more data. This calculation is done by Solid state drive manufacturers on the basis of two things
how many gigabytes or terabytes of data can be written and deleted by an Solid state drive and how long it will take for the average customer (who will buy the Solid state drive) to write / delete this amount of data. A warranty of several years is also given on the basis of this calculation.
The slowness of SSD depends a lot on how much data is being stored, how much free space is available. If more data is stored, it becomes slow.
Size vs Speed:
There is a fairly common idea that the larger the size/capacity, the higher the speed. While this is true for NVMe, it is not entirely true for SATA. The speed of SSD depends on the internal components, how advanced, what quality chip, controller is used or is being used. source: Techquickie and Tech Deals
DRAM Cache and alternatively Host Memory Buffer (HMB):
DRAM Cache is a bit complicated. We may have heard the name of processor cache many times. This type of technology almost always has the main purpose of acting as a bridge between RAM and processor, the speed of hard disk, RAM is much lower than the speed of processor and it can be seen that Ram cannot keep up with the rate at which the processor is working. This creates a bottleneck.
DRAM Cache in Solid state drive usually means using something like extra special memory controller which works much like RAM of Solid state drive and its speed is very high, and the most disturbed data is stored here so that it can be accessed quickly. The speed is higher and the read speed of the application and file is higher.
Basically cache memory stores the most used files or programs of the system so that they can be accessed very quickly.
HOST Memory Buffer :
This is also a kind of Cache. It can be said that any Solid state drive that does not have DRAM uses this technology to do the work of DRAM with a portion of the PC’s Ram.
Some of the top brands:
As a common knowledge there are some popular and top names in both high budget and low budget. In SSD industry samsung, corsair, intel etc. at higher level and low budget, transcend, Team, PNY, western digital are very popular in our country.
