Solid State Drive

Most solid state hard drives now use NAND based flash memory. These devices are said to offer a number of advantages over hard drives including:

Faster start up

Quiet operation

Greater reliability and durability since there are no moving parts to break. They withstand a fall well and can endure high temperatures, vibration, and so forth.

Using the NAND flash based memory, they use less power.

An SSD doesn't require defragmenting.

Where a SSD might fall short, is that they will tend to wear out a bit more quickly than a standard hard drive and their capacity tends to be lower as well. The cost of these devices has dropped since they were first introduced but they still tend to cost more than a traditional hard drive. If you want more speed, then an SSD is a good choice, but if you need a great deal of storage space, a traditional hard drive is the better option as they can offer a few TB of storage and cost less per GB.

There are a few things to consider when choosing your solid state hard drive. Here are some things to think about:

The Interface

Clearly this is determined by what your computer will accept. SATA (the newer devices), IDE or Parallel ATA, and SCSI are some options. Manufacturer information on your computer can point you toward which of these you will need. There are SATA and SCSI adapters available if absolutely necessary however. Most newer computers will accept SATA drives which tend to be fast. You can learn more about this on this page.

The Capacity

Certainly you want enough memory to store the data you have or anticipate having.

Speed

By checking the specifications on the SSD, you can determine it's speed. Speeds of 250MB (read) and 150- 200MB (write) are considered good. Faster is always better. Buyers can also look at latency, noted in milliseconds, less is better of course.

Size and Weight

This can be an important consideration if you will be taking your SSD along with you when you travel.

Performance and Reliability

Specs are important but it's also good to know what current customers think. If you select any of the items below, you will be able to view current customer reviews as well.

Life

As stated above, a solid state hard drive will have a limited lifetime, just as any device will. Shoppers can compare the expected life of these devices by looking for the MTBF rating. This stands for "mean time before failure". A rating of 1.2 million hours would be a good minimum.