Posted to Hard Drives Articles 2009-03-01
Hard drive technology has been in need of an innovation for some time. Solid state technology represents the latest technological breakthrough in hard drives. While it's only just begun to be exploited to its fullest potential, solid state hard drives offer some significant advantages over their magnetic rivals.
To understand the advantages, it's first necessary to understand the workings of a magnetic hard drive. These devices store and retrieve data using a set of metal platters contained in an environmentally-sealed container. These devices are incredibly sensitive. In fact, just one tiny grain of dust getting inside a hard drive can render it useless.
Hard drives contain a head, similar to the stylus apparatus on an old record player, which retrieves the data from the platter and writes data to the platter. These disks spin incredibly fast, thousands of times per minute, which lends to the fragility of the system. Over time, these devices tend to degrade and take damage as does any mechanical system.
Solid state hard drives use no moving components. This eliminates the mechanical wear that characterizes magnetic hard drives. The data is stored in a fashion similar to how it is stored in flash drives, RAM and other forms of rewritable memory.
Many of them are removable devices which means they can be ported from computer to computer without touching any of the inside workings. It also aids the speed of the drives. Because no mechanical device is required to find and scan the portion of the disc on which the data is stored, the time involved in those tasks is completely eliminated.
As any owner of a high-end computer knows, heat is the bane of all digital systems. Solid state hard drives, because they have no moving parts, generate far less heat than do magnetic storage devices.
The durability of solid state hard drives is synergistic with another technological breakthrough: mobile computing. Mobile devices are subjected to more shock, hazardous environmental conditions and plain old abuse than are computers which are permanently stationed in a home. Even the very compact magnetic hard drives used in mobile devices exhibit the fragility of their larger peers. Using solid state hard drives means that these devices can be made more durable and shockproof and that it is a much less riskier proposition to take them into challenging environments or simply around town in one's backpack or purse.
Solid state hard drives are likely to replace magnetic hard drive technology. As with all technology, the first examples have been prohibitively costly for consumers to comfortably adopt. As the technology becomes more common, however, prices are certain to drop and the value will become worth the investment.
LaCie Hard Disk Drives:
LaCie 5big Network 7.5TB 301419U:
7.5TB|5-BAY RAID | Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000
LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra 640GB 7200 RPM 301439U:
640GB 7200 RPM| eSATA 3Gbits | USB | FireWire 400 & 800
Notebook Computers with Solid State Drives:
Toshiba Portege R500-SP2:
Intel® Core™2 Duo processor U76001.20GHz/ 1GB/ 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
Toshiba Portege R600-S4202:
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor SU9400 1.40GHz/ 3GB/ 128GB SSD
Apple MacBook Air MB940LL/A:
Intel Core 2 Duo processor 1.86GHz/ 2GB/ 128GB SSD
