Solid-state disk drives (SSDs) are becoming more common in desktop and laptop computers. While SDDs serve the same purpose as hard disk drives (HDDs), there are some key differences in how they work.
How HDDs Work
To better understand how SSDs work, let’s first look at HDDs. HDDs have a range of spinning magnetic disks where data is saved, stored, and accessed. There is an actuator arm that moves over the spinning disks to read and write data. Since the arm must move into the right position over the spinning disks, it can take a little while before data can be saved or read from the drive.
Additionally, depending on the fragmentation of the data, the arm may need to move to different areas on a disk or different disks to save or retrieve data fully. The disks can also become corrupt and develop bad sectors where data can no longer be accessed or saved.
