Considerations for solid-state drives

Use this information to understand the importance of controller functions when you use solid-state drives (SSD).

Hard-disk drives (HDD) use a spinning magnetic platter to store nonvolatile data in magnetic fields. SSDs are a storage device using nonvolatile solid-state memory, typically flash memory, to emulate HDDs. HDDs have an inherent latency and access time caused by mechanical delays in the spinning of the platter and movement of the read/write head. SSDs greatly reduce the latency and time to access the stored data. The nature of solid-state memory is such that read operations can be performed faster than write operations and write cycles are limited. Using techniques, such as wear leveling and overprovisioning, enterprise class SSDs are designed to withstand many years of continuous use.