Why You Should Buy an Solid State Drive Netbook By Ray Keyes At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

It can be said that netbooks also made Solid State Drives (SSD) popular. After all, the first netbooks that came out of the market used SSD instead of the traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD). But what is an SSD netbook?

“Solid state” is actually an electrical term and it refers to electronic circuitry that is built entirely made out of semiconductors. The term originally referred to electronics that use semiconductors instead of vacuum tubes, like transistor radios.

Is someone says that your netbook has SSD instead of HDD, it only means that your netbook’s storage is built entirely on semiconductors rather than magnetic media like the traditional hard drive.

Flask disks Versus SSD

How different is a flash disk from a solid state drive? A flash disk is a portable storage device that can be plugged into a computer’s USB port. It is similar to an SSD in that it also uses non-volatile memory chips that allow it to store information even without power. But flash disks and SSD differ in form and storage capacity. While a flash disk literally looks like a stick that you plug to a USB port, an SSD resides inside a computer’s chassis, taking the place of the traditional hard drive or HDD.

On the surface, an SSD looks no different than a traditional hard drive because it comes in different standard sizes (1.8”, 2.5” or 3.5”) and also uses either an ATA or SATA drive interfaces so it can be used in a computer.

Why Use an SSD?

Definitely, an SSD has several advantages over the traditional hard drive, and it has a lot to do with the fact that it has no moveable parts. While the typical HDD would have a drive motor to spin its parts to make it useful, storage on an SSD is handled by flash memory chips. Because of this, solid state drives use less power, can boot data faster (up to 20%) and are generally more reliable than traditional hard drives.

The first netbooks to be sold in the market use solid state drives because they draw less power. Netbooks thus have longer battery life. SSD netbooks also tend to be shock-proof. Hard disk drive platters are very fragile and sensitive, even small jarring movements from an impact can cause the drive to be completely unreadable. Since a solid state drive stores all its data in memory chips, there are fewer moving parts to be damaged in any sort of impact.

Disadvantages Of SSD

Probably the only disadvantage of netbooks that use SSD is that they have low storage capacity. While HDD netbooks can store up to 200 GB of data, most SSD netbooks can only hold up to 64GB of data.

Apart from the low storage capacity, SSD-driven netbooks are also more expensive than netbooks that use HDD. But all this is expected to change as the number of companies producing SSD grows, and the capacity for producing the flash memory chips increases. At the moment, solid state drives cost less than half in 2007 than in 2006.

Some netbook manufacturers like MSI are trying to get the best of both SSD and HDD by manufacturing mini laptops that have so-called hybrid storage capacities.

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