What makes ssd good

Think of the controller as the processor of your drive. It routes your reads and writes and performs other key drive performance and maintenance tasks. It can be interesting to dive deep into specific controller types and specs. Some of them are far less common than they used to be, and some are becoming the de facto standard.

All flash memory has a limited life span, meaning after any given storage cell is written to a certain number of times, it will stop holding data. As the years pass and cells start to die, the drive will move your data off the worn-out cells to these fresh new ones, thereby greatly extending the usable lifespan of the drive. The flash in SSDs used to be arranged in a single layer planar. As time progresses, drive makers are stacking more and more layers on top of each other, leading to denser, more spacious, and less-expensive drives.

At this point, the vast majority of current-generation consumer SSDs are made using some type of 3D storage. These days, many drives use layer or layer NAND, and technologies to add more layers are always in the works.

While Micron was heavily involved in the development of 3D Xpoint, and intends to eventually bring it to market, as of this writing, Intel is the only company currently selling the technology to consumers, under its Optane brand. Optane drives have much potential, both on the ultra-fast performance front and as a caching option for those who want the speed of an SSD for frequently used programs but the capacity of a spinning hard drive for media and game storage.

But Intel announced in early that it was discontinuing standalone Optane drives. So unless and until Micron sees fit to bring Xpoint to consumers, the technology seems to be at a dead-end for enthusiasts looking for extreme storage.

But as with most PC hardware, there are diminishing returns for mainstream users as you climb up toward the top of the product stack. Matt Safford.

Topics Components. See all comments If you really want the faster speeds you can get with some M. These expansion cards accept M. Need a guide for how to install an M. Have an older motherboard that lacks M. If you have an open PCIe 3. For upgrades on older laptops, you also may not get a choice. To figure out if your model has an M. You can also try contacting customer support.

Be sure to buy a drive compatible with your laptop—pay attention to details like interface type which is covered in the next section and the Z-height of your original 2. Not all SSDs use the same digital interface to transfer data. The interface limits how fast data can be transferred to and from an SSD. Combine that with affordable prices, and you have a great option for cost-conscious PC builds and upgrades. But, what really makes the p stand out is the fantastic price to performance ratio.

Everyday users may want to look elsewhere, this is all about sheer speed. North America. Included in this guide: 1. For reliability, build, and speed, go for the best SSDs. Interface: PCIe Gen 4. Warranty: Limited warranty up to 5 years or up to the TBW for each capacity. Reasons to avoid - PCIe 3. Warranty: 5-years. Reasons to avoid - Sequential write speeds slow under load.

Warranty: 5 years. Reasons to avoid - Lower endurance. Best U. Specifications Capacity: 1. NAND, the technology in solid state drives, is a type of flash memory. At the lowest level, floating gate transistors record a charge or lack of a charge to store data. The gates are organized in a grid pattern, which is further organized into a block.

Block size can vary, but each row that makes up the grid is called a page. Updating data is more complex for SSDs. All the data in a block must be refreshed when any portion of it is updated. The data on the old block is copied to a different block, the block is erased, and the data is rewritten with the changes to a new block. Each time you ask your computer to retrieve or update data, the SSD controller looks at the address of the data requested and reads the charge status.

When the drive is idle, a process called garbage collection goes through and makes sure the information in the old block is erased and that the block is free to be written to again. Because there are a finite number of times any block can be rewritten, this is an important process that prevents premature wear on the storage drive.

This process is called wear leveling and happens automatically as the drive is working. This allows room for the drive to move and delete items without affecting the overall storage capacity. Although they are catching up, it can be harder to find large-capacity solid state drives.

HDDs can be as much as 2. Why choose a solid state drive? SSDs deliver faster load times for games, applications, and movies.