How does an SSD hard drive work? Easily explained

SSDs are very popular because of their speed. This practical tip explains how an SSD works and what makes it so fast. We also deal with the differences to an HDD.

How does an SSD work?

An SSD (Solid State Drive) differs significantly from an HDD by the short access times. The reason for the speed difference is the different way it works.

• Storage on an HDD works by magnetizing certain areas of rotating disks. Storage on an SSD, on the other hand, is implemented using semiconductors, similar to the memory modules for the main memory.
• The storage method corresponds to that you know from memory cards or USB sticks.
• In contrast to the HDD, an SSD has no read and write head and no other mechanically moving parts. This makes data access much faster.

Overview of different SSD types

SSD is not the same as SSD - even if the functionality via semiconductors is common to everyone. A distinction is made between different types.

• Flash-based SSDs are most similar to the memory cards you know from cameras, for example. Information is stored in the form of an electrical charge on a floating gate transistor. They are characterized by very low energy consumption, but are a little slower than SDRAM-based SSD.
• An SDRAM-based SSD uses RAM chips for storage. In contrast to the flash-based SSD, these require permanent power, so they used more energy. For that you bring more speed - compared to flash SSD they are up to 80 times faster.
• There are also hybrids. These are combinations of a flat storage and a conventional hard disk. The advantage is that only frequently accessed data is saved on the flash module. Flash memory is fast when reading, but somewhat slower when writing data.

We will explain the exact differences between an SSD and a hybrid disk, also called SSHD, in another practical tip.