Solid state drives, or SSD, have come a long way, evolving rather swiftly than traditional hard drives. The word is that one day, SSDs will replace conventional hard drives. Marking an SSD as your priority storage medium would mean your interests lie in making your computer performance-oriented. While SSD vanquishes the territory of efficiency, speed, and compactness, there has been a lot of buzz around the reliability and durability standpoint as it can only withstand a certain amount of reading and write cycles. Here\u2019s a brief insight into the evolution of SSD and its architecture to get a better understanding of this ambiguity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DRAM:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dynamic Random access memory (DRAM) was the primeval member in the family of SSDs. Dynamic RAM stores each bit explicitly on a capacitor integrated into a circuit. Each capacitor in the circuit can be charged or discharged accordingly to represent corresponding binary 1s and 0s. As the charge on a capacitor is subjected to leakage, the data saved on the DRAM is lost within the stipulated time. Due to the following reasons, this ancestor of SSDs ceased to be used as a permanent storage device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Incorporation of Flash in SSD\u2019s:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In layman\u2019s terms, a flash memory is a memory similar to a pen drive. A flash memory can be erased electrically and is a non-volatile storage medium. 1984 marked the usage of EEPROM in memories; nevertheless, a writing program required a complete erase of data on the EEPROM. This led to the invention of flash-based SSDs. Flash-based solid-state drives enable data to be manipulated at the page level, making reading and writing more convenient. A flash-based SSD can be subdivided into NAND-type and NOR-type. NAND-type flash memories are widely preferred for their properties and contribute to a significant portion of SSDs manufactured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ARCHITECTURE:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A solid-state drive primarily comprises a controller, memory, battery, cache, and interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The controller acts as a bridge for communication between the memory and the computer. A controller is responsible for the execution of code at the firmware level and has other functionality as mentioned below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A memory, generally a NAND-based flash memory, is widely preferred by manufacturers for its durability rather than speed. A memory is segregated into blocks, and each block is segregated into pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To ensure a smooth read and write operation on each block\/page, a memory uses a temporary memory called cache, which saves the intermediate information when many parallel read and write operations occur. The controller manipulates the information in the cache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A battery, sometimes a capacitor, is used to back the cache for flushing the data into memory in case of abrupt power loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An interface is the physical bus or connector line which connects the computer and the SSD. Several interface standards are available, and the interface significantly influences the transfer speeds of data. Examples of a few interfaces are Serial ATA, PCIe, Parallel ATA, USB, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a comprehensive look at the architecture, we are now in a superior state of understanding to get a lucid perspective on SSD failures<\/strong> and their indications<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n