Total capacity of ssd solid state drives. Dimensions and connection methods. Data backup

Some well-known manufacturers have switched to the production of solid-state drives completely, for example, Samsung sold its hard drive business to Seagate.

There are also so-called hybrid hard drives, which appeared, among other things, due to the current, proportionately higher cost of solid-state drives. Such devices combine in one device a hard disk drive (HDD) and a relatively small solid-state drive as a cache (to increase the performance and service life of the device, and reduce power consumption).

So far, such drives are used mainly in portable devices (laptops, cell phones, tablets, etc.).

History of development

Currently, the most notable companies that are intensively developing the SSD direction in their activities include Intel, Kingston, Samsung Electronics, SanDisk, Corsair, Renice, OCZ Technology, Crucial and ADATA. In addition, Toshiba is demonstrating its interest in this market.

Architecture and operation

NAND SSD

Drives built on using non-volatile memory (NAND SSD), appeared relatively recently, but due to their much lower cost (from 1 US dollar per gigabyte), they began to confidently conquer the market. Until recently, they were significantly inferior to traditional storage devices - hard drives - in writing speed, but compensated for this with a high speed of information retrieval (initial positioning). Solid-state drives are now being produced with read and write speeds that are many times greater than those of hard drives. They are characterized by relatively small size and low power consumption.

RAM SSD

These drives, built on the use volatile memory (the same as that used in personal computer RAM) are characterized by ultra-fast reading, writing and retrieval of information. Their main disadvantage is their extremely high cost. They are mainly used to speed up the operation of large database management systems and powerful graphics stations. Such drives are usually equipped with batteries to save data in the event of a power loss, and more expensive models are equipped with backup and/or online copy systems. An example of such drives is I-RAM. Users with sufficient RAM can create a virtual machine and place its hard drive in RAM and evaluate the performance.

Disadvantages and advantages

Flaws

Advantages

• No moving parts, hence:

• Complete absence of noise;
• High mechanical resistance;
• Stability of file reading time, regardless of their location or fragmentation;

• High read/write speed, often exceeding the throughput of the hard drive interface (SAS/SATA II 3 Gb/s, SAS/SATA III 6 Gb/s, SCSI, Fiber Channel, etc.);
• Low power consumption;
• Wide operating temperature range;
• There is great modernization potential both in the drives themselves and in their production technologies.
• Lack of magnetic disks, hence:

• Much less sensitivity to external electromagnetic fields;
• Small dimensions and weight; (no need to make a heavy case for shielding)

Microsoft Windows and computers of this platform with solid-state drives

Windows 7 has introduced special optimization for working with solid-state drives. If you have SSD drives, this operating system works with them differently than with regular HDD drives. For example, Windows 7 does not apply defragmentation to the SSD drive, Superfetch and ReadyBoost technologies and other read-ahead techniques that speed up loading applications from regular HDDs.

Acer tablets - Iconia Tab W500 and W501 models, Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 running Windows 7 - run on an SSD drive.

Mac OS X and Macintosh computers with SSDs

On June 11, 2012, based on flash memory, a new MacBook Retina 15 inches was introduced, in which an optional 768 GB of flash memory can be installed.

Development prospects

The main disadvantage of SSD drives - a limited number of rewrite cycles - with the development of non-volatile memory manufacturing technologies will be eliminated by manufacturing according to other physical principles and from other materials, for example, FeRam. By 2013, the company plans to launch retail drives built using ReRAM (resistive random-access memory) technology.

see also

• Hybrid hard drive

Notes

Links

• HDD is dead, long live SSD? Critical review from Mobi magazine, 08/15/2007
• SSD drives based on NAND memory: technologies, principles of operation, varieties, 06/28/2010
• Test of four Team SSDs from TestLabs.kz

In this article I will try to explain to you what is an SSD drive, how it differs from a regular hard drive, I’ll tell you about its advantages and disadvantages, and you will also learn by what parameters (criteria) you should choose an SSD drive when purchasing.

This article today about SSD drives was not born by chance. It turned out that many readers have absolutely no idea what it is.

So, after my description of the SSD life program, the vast majority of users rushed to check their regular hard drives with this utility, which caused confusion in the comments. There I promised to write in more detail about SSD drives - I’m doing it.

What is an SSD drive

In “dry language” the definition of an SSD disk sounds like this: solid state drive(SSD solid-state drive) - a computer non-mechanical storage device based on memory chips.

It is unlikely that you are imbued with this meager definition. Now I’ll try to explain what an SSD drive is with a “wet tongue,” as they say, on my fingers.

I’ll come from afar... First, you need to remember (or find out for the first time) what a regular computer hard drive is (it’s also called a hard drive).

A hard drive (HDD) is the device in your computer that stores all the data (programs, movies, images, music... the Windows operating system itself) and it looks like this...

Information on a hard drive is written (and read) by reversing the magnetization of cells on magnetic plates that rotate at wild speed. Above the plates (and between them) a special carriage with a reading head rushes like a frightened one.

This whole thing is buzzing and moving constantly. In addition, this is a very “thin” device and is afraid of even a simple wobble during its operation, not to mention falling to the floor, for example (the reading heads will meet the rotating disks and hello to the information stored on the disk).

But now the solid state drive (SSD) comes onto the scene. This is the same device for storing information, but based not on rotating magnetic disks, but on memory chips, as mentioned above. It's like a big flash drive.

Nothing spinning, moving or buzzing! Plus - just crazy speed of writing/reading data!

On the left is the hard drive, on the right is the SSD drive.

It's time to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of SSD drives...

Advantages of SSD drives

1. Speed

This is the biggest plus of these devices! If you replace your old hard drive with a flash drive, you won’t recognize your computer!

Before the advent of SSD drives, the slowest device in a computer was the hard drive. It, with its ancient technology from the last century, incredibly slowed down the enthusiasm of a fast processor and fast RAM.

2. Noise level=0 dB

It makes sense - there are no moving parts. In addition, these drives do not heat up during operation, so cooling coolers turn on less often and do not work as intensely (creating noise).

3. Shock and vibration resistance

I watched a video online - a connected and working SSD was shaken, dropped on the floor, knocked on... but it continued to work quietly! No comments.

4. Light weight

Not a huge plus, of course, but still, hard drives are heavier than their modern competitors.

5. Low power consumption

I’ll do without the numbers - the battery life of my old laptop has increased by more than one hour.

Disadvantages of SSD drives

1. High cost

This is at the same time the most limiting drawback for users, but also very temporary - prices for such drives are constantly and rapidly falling.

2. Limited number of rewrite cycles

A regular, average SSD drive based on flash memory with MLC technology is capable of producing approximately 10,000 read/write cycles of information. But the more expensive type of SLC memory can already last 10 times longer (100,000 rewrite cycles).

As for me, in both cases the flash drive can easily last at least 3 years! This is just the average life cycle of a home computer, after which the configuration is updated and components are replaced with more modern, faster and cheaper ones.

Progress does not stand still and tadpoles from manufacturing companies have already come up with new technologies that significantly increase the lifespan of SSD drives. For example, RAM SSD or FRAM technology, where the resource, although limited, is practically unattainable in real life (up to 40 years in continuous read/write mode).

3. Impossibility of recovering deleted information

Deleted information from an SSD drive cannot be restored by anyone. special utility. There are simply no such programs.

If during a large voltage surge in a regular hard drive, in 80% of cases only the controller burns out, then in SSD drives this controller is located on the board itself, along with the memory chips, and the entire drive burns out - hello family photo album.

This danger is practically reduced to zero in laptops and when using an uninterruptible power supply.

Bus capacity

Remember, I advised you how to choose a flash drive? So, when choosing a flash drive, data read/write speed is also of paramount importance. The higher this speed, the better. But you should also remember about the bus bandwidth of your computer, or rather, the motherboard.

If your laptop or desktop computer is very old, there is no point in buying an expensive and fast SSD drive. He simply will not be able to work even at half his capacity.

To make it clearer, I will outline the throughput of various buses (data transfer interface):

IDE (PATA) - 1000 Mbit/s. This is a very ancient interface for connecting devices to the motherboard. To connect an SSD drive to such a bus, you need a special adapter. The point of using the described disks in this case is absolutely zero.

SATA - 1,500 Mbit/s. It's more fun, but not too much.

SATA2 - 3,000 Mbit/s. The most common tire at the moment. With such a bus, for example, my drive operates at half its capacity. He needs...

SATA3 - 6,000 Mbit/s. This is a completely different matter! This is where the SSD drive will show itself in all its glory.

So before purchasing, find out what bus you have on your motherboard, as well as which bus the drive itself supports, and decide on the feasibility of the purchase.

Here, for example, is how I chose (and what guided) my HyperX 3K 120 GB. Read speed is 555 MB/s, and data write speed is 510 MB/s. This drive now works in my laptop at exactly half its capacity (SATA2), but exactly twice as fast as a standard hard drive.

Over time, it will migrate to children's gaming computers, which have SATA3, and there they will demonstrate all their power and speed without limiting factors (outdated, slow data transfer interfaces).

We conclude: if you have a SATA2 bus in your computer and do not plan to use the disk in another (more powerful and modern) computer, buy a disk with a bandwidth of no higher than 300 MB/s, which will be significantly cheaper and at the same time twice as fast as yours current hard drive.

Form factor

Also, when choosing and purchasing a flash drive, pay attention to the form factor (size and dimensions). It can be 3.5″ (inches) - larger and slightly cheaper, but will not fit into a laptop, or 2.5″ - smaller and fits into any laptop (for desktop computers they are usually equipped with special adapters).

Thus, it is more practical to buy a disk in the 2.5″ form factor - and you can install it anywhere and sell it (if anything) easier. And it takes up less space in the system unit, which improves cooling of the entire computer.

IOPS indicator

An important factor is IOPS (the number of input/output operations per second), the higher this indicator, the faster the drive will work with a larger volume of files.

Memory chip

Memory chips are divided into two main types MLC and SLC. The cost of SLC chips is much higher and the service life is on average 10 times longer than that of MLC memory chips, but with proper operation, the service life of drives based on MLC memory chips is at least 3 years.

Controller

This is the most important part of SSD drives. The controller controls the operation of the entire drive, distributes data, monitors the wear of memory cells and evenly distributes the load. I recommend giving preference to time-tested and well-proven controllers from SandForce, Intel, Indilinx, and Marvell.

SSD memory capacity

It would be most practical to use an SSD only for hosting the operating system, and it is better to store all data (movies, music, etc.) on a second hard drive. With this option, it is enough to buy a disk with a size of ~ 60 GB. This way you can save a lot and get the same acceleration of your computer (in addition, the service life of the drive will increase).

Again, I’ll give an example of my solution - special containers for hard drives are sold online (very inexpensively), which can be inserted into a laptop in 2 minutes instead of an optical CD drive (which I’ve used a couple of times over four years). Here is a great solution for you - an old disk in place of a floppy drive, and a brand new SSD in place of a standard hard drive. It couldn't have been better.

And finally, a couple of interesting facts:

Why is a hard drive often called a hard drive? Back in the early 1960s, IBM released one of the first hard drives and the number of this development was 30 - 30, which coincided with the designation of the popular Winchester rifled weapon (Winchester), so this slang name stuck to all hard drives.

I'm just reviewing programs! Any complaints - to their manufacturers!

Recently, solid-state drives have become increasingly installed on computers and laptops. So what is an SSD drive? To put it simply, this is a huge flash drive, only with faster write and read parameters. There is not a single mechanical part in a solid state drive. It consists only of microcircuits. Hard drives have a large amount of memory, but low speed, and solid-state drives, with low capacity, have speeds several times higher than HDDs.

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 a hard drive and an SSD.

Just imagine that the hard drive is a notepad with some information. And to find and put together this information, you need to leaf through your notebook. And an SSD is a sheet of paper on which the data is at your fingertips. Accordingly, he will find information much faster.

The HDD spends a lot of time moving the read heads and searching for the necessary sectors on the magnetic plates. The SSD simply provides the ready-made information you need. This happens when the system starts, when copying or reading several thousand small files (for example, photos). Therefore, the speed of this type of media is several tens of times higher than that of a HDD. Programs and the system itself installed on a solid-state drive will launch much faster than on a regular hard drive.

It is best to buy SSDs from manufacturers that have a proven track record of producing these products. Such companies include Crucial, Kingston, Corsair, Samsung, Tohiba, Transcend, Intel, OCZ, SunDisk. You should not purchase 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 are mainly used to install an operating system and programs on them to increase their loading speed.

Flaws

The main disadvantages of solid-state drives include their cost. Even a small SSD costs much more than regular hard drives, and their prices fluctuate in different directions every year.

SSD is flash memory consisting of thousands of cells that tend to wear out. Most wear occurs when information is written to the disk. When reading, cells fail much more slowly. It is conventionally believed that the smaller the capacity of a solid-state drive, the more reliable it is, since it does not have additional chips and consumes less power. But this is all theoretical and has not been confirmed in any way.
Another disadvantage of SSDs is the inability to recover data when deleted. If you accidentally experience a power surge, only a small board in the hard drive will burn out, and the information that remains on the magnetic plates can be restored. The solid state drive fails completely with all the files on it.

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 MB.s. An average-priced disk can have read and write speeds within 450 MB.s. The random access time of solid-state drives is not taken into account, since it is equal to 0.1 - 0.2 ms. SSDs have a SATA-3 connector, so the same connector should preferably be installed on the motherboard. Otherwise, the disk will not work at full capacity. An SSD is also much more durable than a regular hard drive. He is not afraid of blows or
falls.

So what should you choose?

Now you have an idea of ​​what SSD drives are. Let's look at when it makes sense to use them.

For an office computer, you can install only one 320 GB hard drive. If you play games or have a professional computer, then the best option is to install two disks. SSD size 60 - 128 GB. for installing programs, an operating system, and a 1 - 2 TB hard drive. If you use a laptop as an addition to your main computer, then installing a hard drive with a capacity of up to 500 GB will be enough. If the laptop is the main computer, then it would be best to use a 750 GB HDD in it - or higher, depending on the purpose for which it is used.

We have long been accustomed to hard drives on which our files, documents, videos, images, and basically everything are stored. Hard drives have been around for a very long time. Back in 1956, IBM created a storage device that rightfully bears the name hard disk. But a deeper and more standardized introduction of these information storage devices occurred, of course, in connection with the growing popularity of personal computers.

At first, hard drives were bulky, extremely noisy and had available space of only about 5-50 MB, which, by the way, was enough at that time to install the operating system and all work applications, as well as a set of personal files.

Subsequently, the drives acquired a form factor that is still popular today for desktop systems, which is 3.5", the number of vendors producing these products decreased, and the volume of drives grew year by year and totaled hundreds of megabytes, gigabytes, tens of them and now thousands of gigabytes per one device.

Hard drives are used everywhere, in almost all computers; at one time there was an attempt to use them even in mobile phones, since at that time Flash memory chips were too expensive, unreliable and significantly inferior in volume.

The principle of operation has not changed, in fact, for decades. Inside any HDD there is a motor, read heads and magnetic plates. In other words, mechanics controlled by electronics. Moreover, all this must be in sterile conditions, and the safety of information depends on hundreds of different factors, which is why these devices are sensitive to many external manifestations of influence.

The evolution of storage systems and the arrivalSSD.

Over time, not only the volume, but also the speed of hard drives grew, new communication interfaces were released, until, finally, they reached a logical “dead end” of development in their speed indicators. No matter how much we would like to, it is almost impossible to create a very fast hard drive. Of course, there are separate “accelerated” drives (used, as a rule, in servers), but they are not omnipotent, and they are also much more expensive to manufacture.

At the same time, in parallel, another direction of information storage systems began to develop, which received the abbreviation SSD (Solid-State Drive), that is, a solid-state (or semiconductor) drive. SSD has a lot of differences from its opponent, the main thing is the absence of the entire mechanical part of the device, instead of which digital systems for recording/reading information are used.

In other words, a solid-state drive consists of a controller that controls the operation of memory chips with information, which significantly increases both fault tolerance under physical influence and operating speed. The first experiments with SSDs took place back in 1978, then they used memory similar to RAM (volatile), it is capable of storing information only directly during operation, and after that it is completely reset, which, of course, is inconvenient for a storage system.

Much later, with the advent of Flash memory, that is, non-volatile chips capable of storing information all the time, SSDs began to flourish, and the first manufacturers began to release new products. Today, many companies produce exclusively SSD devices, most often these are those companies that are in one way or another connected with the production of memory chips, for example Samsung, Micron, Kingston and others. There are also a number of vendors that produce SSDs under their own brand, however, using ready-made products and “semi-finished products” from other manufacturers to assemble their own products.

An SSD consists of digital circuitry and has no moving parts. The photo above shows the main components of the drive:

1. Device memory chips. (usually located on both sides of the printed circuit board). The volume, reliability and speed of the SSD depend on them.
2. Chip with buffer memory. Developers use different memory chips, but no direct relationship has been observed regarding the overall speed of the drive.
3. Interface and power connectors. Modern SSDs use the SATA interface in various versions (SATA-300, SATA-600). SATA are compatible with each other, but the latest versions of this interface allow you to unlock the potential of high-speed drives.
4. Controller (processor) SSD. The SSD controller is one of the most important parts of the device. It depends on the controller how efficient the SSD will be, whether it will support cleaning technologies, and how it fares with reliability.

Advantages and disadvantagesSSD.

Main advantages:

1) As mentioned earlier, an SSD does not have any moving parts, hence the increased reliability under physical impact. That is, if you drop a hard drive, it will most likely begin to malfunction or stop working altogether, especially when it comes to impact while the device is operating. A solid-state drive, similar to a flash drive, can withstand light shocks, shocks, and vibration.

2) The second and main advantage of SSD is its speed. Moreover, many users confuse the concepts a little and believe that high linear read/write speeds of the device (exceeding those on hard drives) are a guarantee of high performance, but this is not entirely true. The main “feature” of SSDs was and remains high access and response speeds; this is paramount for read operations and it is because of this that files and applications are opened almost instantly on solid-state drives. While the controller of a traditional HDD is forced to wait for operations performed by the mechanics of the device, the SSD controller is already processing this information by reading it from the memory chips. Moreover, the higher the load (the more different accesses to the logical disk), the greater the advantage the SSD will show.

3) The mechanics inside the HDD also affect the device's power consumption, which is significantly lower on SSDs.

4) The absence of moving parts affects noise performance. The SSD does not produce any sounds at all.

5) "Immunity" to file fragmentation. Over time, the HDD loses some performance due to fragmentation of the recorded files, when they are “scattered” across the entire platter and the device needs more time to read these files. This is precisely why the defragmentation procedure was invented. For an SSD, fragmentation is not important, nor is the location of the file (which is again important for an HDD).

Main disadvantages:

1) Limited number of rewrites of information cells. As an example, we can again cite ordinary memory cards; they all have only a limited number of operating cycles, which theoretically reduces the reliability of the device as a whole; in practice, this means that the drive will work out its service life with normal use in a home computer/laptop. The developers take this feature of drives into account, and therefore recommend not “filling” them completely, leaving free space. However, SSDs often have additional memory reserves created just for this purpose. This is necessary for the lifespan of the SSD, as its internal controller tries to avoid any cell receiving a critical level of write cycles and constantly works to increase the life of the device by selecting the least worn cells.

2) Price for 1 GB. In terms of price per 1 GB of information, SSDs are still inferior to their “brothers” hard drives, but given that every year the volume of devices is growing and prices are constantly decreasing, we can safely say that sooner or later solid-state memory will be equal in price characteristics with hard drives (or replace it completely).

3) human factor. To work with SSDs, it is advisable to follow a few simple rules. If they are neglected, the device may “grow old” faster than its allotted lifespan, which will affect the speed of operation and, subsequently, the fault tolerance of the SSD.

SSD orHDD?

SSDs are developing at a crazy pace. Controllers and memory chips are constantly being improved, production volumes are increasing, and even corporations are switching to using solid-state drives. The question of “what to choose now” is quite simple: ? But the time will soon come when HDDs, to one degree or another, will begin to lose ground in the market, as is actually happening now. And in the end, this question will disappear by itself. Think about it, not so long ago, all people had CRT monitors on their desks, and people were arguing about expensive and lower-quality LCD devices. In the same way, we went to buy film for cameras. But will you find new models of CRT monitors in the store now, or maybe for leisure photography you will buy something other than a digital camera?

Share On

Today we will look at the main points and operating principles of solid-state SSD drive technology. As you remember, we conducted comparative testing of one SSD and two HDD drives. We looked at what it looks like from the inside and what main blocks it consists of.

We have also listed the main advantages of this technology, and now we will consider the disadvantages that are inherent in it at the moment. Let's present the main ones in the form of a list:

1. High (relative to HDD drives) cost of data storage, i.e. - we get less disk capacity for more money
2. Greater vulnerability (relative to magnetic recording devices) to electrical noise and power supply problems (sudden power outages, magnetic fields, static electricity)
3. You cannot completely fill the disk (15-20% of the space should be free)
4. The service life of the media is limited to a certain number of write cycles of its cells

But let's go in order! Let's start with what is an SSD drive and what is its operating principle?

This is a solid-state drive that uses NAND flash memory chips instead of traditional plates coated with a ferromagnetic layer.

NAND memory is an evolution of flash memory, the chips of which had much lower performance, durability and were structurally more massive.

You might be interested in the fact that flash memory was developed in one of the divisions of Toshiba in 1984. The first commercial chip based on this development was released by Intel in 1988. And a year later (in 1989), the same Toshiba introduced a new type of flash memory - NAND.

At the moment, there are three main options (modifications) of NAND memory:

• SLC (Single Level Cell)
• MLC (two-level - Multi Level Cell)
• TLC (three-level - Three Level Cell)

The most expensive and reliable solutions are devices based on SLC chips. Why? They allow each memory cell to store only one bit of information. Unlike them, MLC and TLC chips can store two and three bits, respectively. This was made possible by using different levels of electrical charge on the gates of the memory cells.

This can be shown schematically like this:

Such a multi-level structure allows you to dramatically increase the capacity of chips with the same physical volume (as a result, each gigabyte is cheaper). BUT! Nothing is given for free! Therefore, MLC and TLC chips have a sharply reduced lifespan, which is directly related to the number of rewrite cycles of their cells.

For SLC this is 100,000 erase/write cycles, for MLC - 10,000, and for TLC - only 5,000. This decrease in reliability is associated with the gradual destruction of the dielectric layer of the floating gate of the cell due to the small reserve for changing its state under the influence of electric current. Plus, due to the fact that with each new level the task of accurately recognizing the level of the electrical signal becomes more complicated, which means that the total time for searching for the desired cell with data increases, the likelihood of reading errors increases.

To combat the phenomena described above, manufacturers have to develop specialized highly intelligent management microcontrollers for SSD drives, which, in addition to I/O procedures, must write information to the media so that its flash memory chips wear out evenly and control this wear, balancing the load, as well. - carry out error correction, etc.

It is the controller that is the weak point, since it is more sensitive to power problems and damage to the microprogram (firmware) located in it can lead to the complete loss of all user data. And their correct restoration is an even more labor-intensive operation than in the case of HDD drives. Due to the fact that the data is scattered across different memory chips and it is necessary to correctly restore their original structure, and this is not easy.

Therefore, SSD drive manufacturers regularly update the firmware of their drives and make them available for free download, refining and improving the device’s operating algorithms and preventing data loss in the event of an emergency.

Manufacturers also combat wear and tear of MLC memory cells using a method that has proven itself in disks with a magnetic recording principle: reserving part of their capacity (10-20%) for dynamic replacement of worn-out cells. In the case of HDD, this area is used for replacement.

But we, as users, can also help our SSD drive not to waste its limited “life” resource when idle and configure the operating system in such a way as to minimize unnecessary disk access.

I will show you the general principles of what to do and what to try to avoid, and you yourself will configure your system to work optimally with a solid-state drive.

For example: we know that the Windows operating system actively uses the page file (the hidden system file “pagefile.sys”) during its operation. What does this mean in relation to the wear of SSD drive cells and everything that we talked about above? And the fact that a separate area of ​​the system flash drive is intensively used (often overwritten by some service data that we don’t need and, in fact, is actively worn out)!

What can be done? Right! Should I transfer the swap file to another (non-SSD drive), as I did, or, if there is a large amount of RAM, abandon it altogether (set it to “0”)?

Let's go further: the defragmentation procedure is not only unnecessary for this type of device (their access speed is the same for any cell, regardless of where the final file is located), but it is also simply harmful. For the same reason as described above. Extra (idle) access to the disk only further reduces its limited resource. This means we turn off the corresponding defragmentation service. It would also be a good idea to disable file indexing, which is necessary for faster searching, but how often do we use it?

I think you get the principle. And now I would like to show you a small program “SSD Mini Tweaker” (tweaker optimizer), which similarly optimizes the operation of an SSD drive. In it, just check the boxes we need opposite the corresponding items and click the “Apply changes” button.

The computer will restart and the changes will take effect. The program is remarkable in that it has a Russian interface and detailed help in Russian. So, at any time you can familiarize yourself in detail with the function that you are going to disable or leave enabled.

You can download the utility. The archive contains versions for 32 and 64 bit systems and a help file in Russian.

Since we have devoted so much time to the issue of optimal disk use and wear and tear of its memory cells, I can’t help but present to you another interesting development. The “SSD Life Pro” program, the main task of which is to keep track of the disk’s operating time and report the approximate date of its failure.

What do we see here? The entry “FW: 1.00” is the firmware version of the disk, below shows the occupied and free space on it, the total operating time from the first start-up and the number of starts. Also pay attention to the TRIM line (must be active), this indicates that the performance of the SSD drive will be optimal.

Below is a screenshot of the same program, but taken from its developer’s website. It shows that the disk from Intel correctly transmitted its SMART parameters to the utility and, based on them, the utility displayed an extended forecast of its condition.

As you can see, the failure of the drive is “scheduled” for November 7, 2020 :)

If we click on the link “How do you think this?” at the top of the program window, we will go to the developer’s website and can see (in Russian) how exactly such a calculation is made?

You can use the program. If it accurately shows the “lifetime” of your disk, please sign up, I think all readers will be interested!

To conclude this topic, let’s listen to the recommendation of the well-respected company Intel, which says that the ideal operating conditions for an SSD solid-state drive is that it is filled with data less than 75% with a ratio of static (rarely changed) and dynamic (frequently changed) information - 3 To 1 . The last 10-20% of disk space should not be used, as it is needed for the TRIM command to work correctly. To work, it needs free space to regroup data (just like the defragmentation function). The general rule is - the more free space, the faster the device works.

At the moment, an SSD drive is ideal as a system partition on which the operating system and programs are installed and that’s it. Data and all work on them should (if possible) take place on the second (HDD) disk. Also, solid-state drives can be effectively used on servers for caching static data.

Now, let's take a quick look at why more expensive models of SSD solid-state drives have such excellent speed properties and how they differ from their “younger” counterparts?

Firstly: this is the same intelligent drive controller chip, which can be designed as multi-channel i.e. - can write data simultaneously to each flash memory chip of the disk. As a result, the overall performance of the device will be equal to the speed of one memory chip multiplied by the number of controller channels. Well, that's to simplify the situation a little :)

Also, more expensive models use additional elements soldered onto the board. This could be, for example, a series of capacitors located near the disk's RAM chip, which ensure that data from the cache is guaranteed to be retained in the event of a power failure.

When a critical mass of faulty drive cells is reached, high-quality chip firmware can completely block the SSD drive for write functions and switch it to read-only mode, which guarantees the safety of user data (possibility) until the device completely fails.

And at the end of our article, let's touch on another interesting type of solid-state drives. These are “RAM SSD” drives. What is it?

Such hybrid devices use volatile chips to store information, completely identical to those used in modules. They have ultra-fast data access, read and write speeds and can be successfully used to speed up large databases and where peak performance is needed.

Such systems are equipped with batteries to maintain operation in the absence of electricity, and more expensive models are equipped with backup systems when data is copied to HDD media.

This is what such a device might look like, which is detected by the operating system as a hard drive.

And here is a simpler option, made in the form of a PCI Express X1 card

As you can see, the operating principle here is the same, but the function of flash memory chips or HDD “pancakes” here is performed by ordinary RAM modules.

Now, as promised, I want to say a few words about subjective feelings after using a solid-state drive. The operating system (Windows 7) boots and shuts down noticeably faster. The same can be said about installing and launching programs. Some applications are simply amazing: Microsoft Word 2003 “shoots” in less than a second! You don’t have time to mentally prepare to work with it :) Yes, it’s fast, but don’t expect something phenomenal, after all, this is not a “revolution”, but an “evolution” :)

That's all I have for today. See you in the next articles!

And at the very end - what the production of NAND memory chips looks like: