Can someone explain exactly how SSD's work?

T

Tiger

Veteran X
Google comes up with techy answers, but in layman's terms how is data accessed with Solid-State Drives?

example: HDD's have a spinning disk inside from which data is stored and accessed via tiny bumps on the surface of the disk.
 
The wiki bogs the description in terms of semiconductors and electron tubes. I want a way to explain how they work to non-computer savvy people.

This will be useful knowledge once these are common place and you have to explain what an SSD is to a friend/coworker/mother!
 
a hard drive that is solid

why would you need to explain this to someone, they probably don't understand how current hard drives work anyway
 
You're worrying your head over that now?

Just tell them it works like the memory in their computer, but it's a whole bunch crammed in a card. If they can't wrap their mind around that, smack'em upside the head.
 
Just show them a pretty picture like this and tell them to leave you alone. ;)

800px-Magnetic_core.jpg
 
nSpectre said:
You're worrying your head over that now?

Just tell them it works like the memory in their computer, but it's a whole bunch crammed in a card. If they can't wrap their mind around that, smack'em upside the head.
Click to expand...

More specifically, it's a nonvolatile form that works like the memory in their computer, meaning that it doesn't require power constantly. The downside is that it has significantly reduced re-write capability compared to standard memory. The individual bits are written to once, and then passed over by the controller chip until the entire drive has been written to, and then it starts again from the first bit, this helps preserve data integrity by keeping the wear and tear on each bit to a minimum. I think most drives have a mean limit of 100,000 writes per bit before they fail.

Mechanically, it's a tube of silicon that moves in one direction or another based on charge applied to it.
Negative charge moves it down, positive moves it up. When it's up, its a 1, when it's down, it's a 0.
 
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look up flip-flop or latch (circuits)

now imagine a gigantic array of functionally similar but far more advanced circuitry

that's about as good of an explanation as i can come up with
 
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