Solid State Drive

What Does Solid State Drive Mean?

A solid state drive (SSD) is an electronic storage drive built on solid state architecture. SSDs are built with NAND and NOR flash memory to store non-volatile data and dynamic random access memory (DRAM). A SSD and magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) share a similar purpose.

Techopedia Explains Solid State Drive

SSD incorporates the storage technique implemented in microchip-based flash memory, where data is electronically stored on flash memory chips. An SSD is an entirely electronic storage device, and its physical assembly contains no mechanical objects.

A SSD has two key components:

Flash memory: Contains storage memory.
Controller: An embedded microprocessor that processes functions, like error correction, data retrieval and encryption. Manages access to input/output (I/O) and read/write (R/W) operations between the SSD and host computer.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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