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FAQ on Solid State Hard Disk Drive

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Compare SSD to HDD

Interface Differences

How does an SSD (Solid State Hard Disk Drive) compare to my current Hard Disk?

Well there are many added benefits -

 

  • SSD solid state hard disk drive makes no sound so good for your environment.
  • SSD solid state hard disk drive generates virtually no heat so is good for your cooling systems on your PC.
  • They use only a fraction of power - so in a laptop you get better battery life
  • They last a lot longer so you don't get the dreaded disk failures (check out http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/index.html)
  •  SSD will run for 10+ years based on writing 500GB per day
  • They are much faster so you don't hang around waiting for the OS to load or for programs to load up.

    •  

  • They have no latency which makes everything faster, especially searching or shuffling data.

     

    • Wikipedia has great info on SSD's - check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive and info on the TRIM function at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

     

    HDD
    Average Read Speed (MB/s)*
    Average Write Speed (MB/s)*
    Latency*
    Price*
    Seagate Barracuda 7200
    66.6
    66.5
    4.16ms
    £115
    Raptor WD740GD
    65.1
    64.9
    2.99ms
    £115
    Deskstar 7k500
    51.1
    51.0
    4.17ms
    £122.50
             

     

    * as of 2008

     

    • Why are some solid state hard disk drives listed as 256GB and others 240GB? (or 128GB/120GB etc)

    There is an amount of space lost to internal functions of the drive.  The bigger the drive, the larger this amount is set aside.  No manufacturer will produce a 256GB drive where all 256GB is available to the user.

    Some state the lower value to cut down on after sale enquiries as to why the drive does not show the full amount.  Other manufacturers assume that their customers understand this.  It's not actually that different from traditional spinning disk technology.  There is a good article about this at http://www.overclockers.com/ssds-trim-disk-space/

     

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    • What is SLC and MLC?

           Single Layer Cell and Multi Layer Cell

     

    SLC Solid State Hard Disk Drive

    Single Layer Cell solid state hard disk drives are quicker but are restricted to the capacity of the size of the RAM used. Each cell on the slab of silicon

    (there are millions of cells on each) has an on or off state. Voltage is measured within the cell to determine it's state. Let's say this voltage

    is measured between 0 and 100 ma. Anywhere above 1ma is read to be on. Below 1ma is off.

    (SLC Chart showing a byte of 10110111)

     

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    MLC Solid State Hard Disk Drives
    Multi Layer Cell solid state drives can have larger data capacities but are slower than SLC drives. Here each cell can be split - so for a dual layer voltage

    between 1 and 50 and 51 and 100 doubles the capacity of the cell to store 2 lots of data. For a 4 layer cell between 1 and 25, 26 and 50, 51

    and 75, 76 and 100 gives 4 layers of state within each cell. This of course takes longer to calculate which slows the drive down, but gives a

    greater data capacity. It also means a more complex controller card requiring greater accuracy. In reality MLC drives currently have 2 levels although 3 is on the cards by some manufacturers.

     

    (MLC Chart showing 2 bytes 11010011 and 11101101 within 8 cells)This is a very simplified view of the concept

    you can find out more at http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=partnerContentDetail&articleid=CA6319917

     

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    What are the differences between the various solid state hard disk drive interfaces?


    SATA
    SATA stands for Serial Attached Technology Attachment and uses a data connection as well as the power connection.

    SATA Interface on an SSD
     SATA Ports
    SATA Ports on an SSD
    SATA Power Cable
    SATA Power Cable
    SATA Data Cable
    SATA Data Cable

    The images show the 2x connectors (power and the data connector).  They only fit one way, so you cannot get it wrong.  Each connector has an 'L' shaped format that fits in the profile of the connector on the drive.
    For SATA drives with direct connections to laptops, that do not use any cables, the drives only fit in one way round.  Take note of which way round the drive is when you remove it to be sure to put the SSD in the correct way around and never force the drive or you may damage the connectors (though you would have to push it very hard as they are very robust).
    SATA Ports on an SSD

    The SATA interface is now at's it's 3rd version.  Confusingly the interface is measure in Gigabits Per Second (Gb/s).  This should not be confused with the Read/Write speed references of the SSDs which are shown in Mega Bits Per  Second (MB/s).  

    1 Gb/s (1 Gigabit per second) = 1250 MB/s (1200 Megabits per second) 
    1 MB/s (1 Megabit per second) = 1250000 bits per second


    SATA revision 1.0 (SATA 1.5 Gb/s) or SATA I
    SATA 1.0 is known as SATA 1.5 Gb/s has a maximum speed of 1.5 Gigabits per second, the format has an uncoded transfer rate of 1.2 Gb/s (150 MB/s).  This has a similar speed maximum capability to IDE/PATA ATA 133.

    SATA revision 2.0 (SATA 3 Gb/s) or SATA II
    Sata 2.0 is known as SATA 3 Gb/s  has a maximum speed of 3.0 Gigabits per second, the format has an uncoded transfer rate of 2.4 Gb/s (300 MB/s).  This is double the previous version's maximum capacity.

    SATA revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gb/s) or SATA III
    Sata 3.0 is known as SATA 6 Gb/s  has a maximum speed of 6.0 Gigabits per second, the format has an uncoded transfer rate of 4.8Gb/s (600 MB/s).  This is double the previous version's maximum capacity.


    IDE/PATA ATA
    This format is now out of date.  The last version was ATA 133 and had a maximum transfer rate of 133 MB/s.  

    To compare these figures with other types of Bus - here is a list of other bus types used for storage:
    eSATA - 300 MB/s
    SAS 600 - 600 MB/s |  - unsurprising as these use the same interface connectors as SATA
    SAS 300 - 300 MB/s |  - and in most cases SATA drives can be used in place of SAS
    SAS 150 - 150MB/s  |  - (though mixing of drive types is not recommended)
    USB 1.0  - 1.5MB/s
    USB 2.0 - 60 MB/s
    USB 3.0 - 400MB/s
    SCSI Ultra-640 - 640MB/s
    SCSI Ultra-320 - 320MB/s

    mSATA (mini-SATA)
    This format was introduced in 2009 and uses a mini PCI-Express connector.
    mSATA comes in either SATA I (1.5Gb/s) or SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) and is used on some notebooks from Dell, Lenovo and the Apple MacBook Air 2010.
    Renice produce a converter to allow mSATA drives to be used in any 2.5inch installation.

    Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)

    The AHCI standard defined by Intel, specifies the use of SATA host bus adapters in a non-implementation-specific manner.  It is the method that data stored in memory can be easily exchanged with storage devices (HDD and SSDs).
    An AHCI enabled motherboard is the recommend setting to use a Solid State Disk drive to enable the full use of the functions built within this interface, including TRIM.

    If you install your Windows 7 or Windows Vista system while in legacy mode - AHCI will be emulated, but you will not get all of the benefits.  However - Microsoft have given instructions here on how to resolve it retrospectively (invloving editing the registry before you make the change in your BIOS).

    NAS/DAS Storage

    • What is NAS and DAS?

    Network attached Storage enclosures allow you to have a device with Hard Disk Drives or Solid State Disk drives>configured that you can access the device via your network.


    Some of these devices also have an operating system which allow you to do other things with it - act as a Gateway or Router, managed your storage access levels etc.


    Direct Attached Storage (DAS) are devices that also have drives installed but are connected directly to your PC or server through SATA, Fibre, SCSI or some other connection method

    • What is JBOD?

    JBOD stands for Just a Bunch of Disks - this is similar to RAID but does not provide any data redundancy.

    Please see this wiki for a full explanation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBOD#Concatenation_.28JBOD_or_SPAN.29

     

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