Solid State

is the one not asked. You've been around long enough to know to post a question to Questions.
I don't exactly know... but this might help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_drive

It is a drive comprised of all flash memory. There are no moving parts, and they usually have a sick seek time!

But they are a little different than flash memory, such as you can format them in NTFS file system. They say you don't need to defrag them, but when I purchased one after the OS install and all my programs I ran a defrag. sequential read and write is faster than random read and write...

The down side is that they have a limited amount of read and write. So if you were running a high volume database on a SSD, it wouldnt last a year (if that)... but they are good for home users. they will last about 4 years, last time I did the math...

My xp box will load the OS in about 10-15 seconds VS 45 seconds on a regular Laptop drive... so huge performance jump :). But I don't know if it was really worth the price...

Stands for Solid State Drive - The guy who responded "A misnomer" is a jerk. (But I guess that was obvious).

Simply like a "solid state transistor radio" it is more of a marketing title - but effectively, the other HELPFUL answers here are correct. Expensive, non-mechanical persistent storage.

A couple of observations.

They're very popular in UMPCs/Netbooks.

The limited writes are a concern when something (an OS, for example) is likely to make many ADMINISTRATIVE writes to the same physical area of the drive). There are some schemes that have been introduced into SSD controllers to try and mitigate this. But the jury is still out on the longevity of SSD drives. It is possible that they may have lifespans approaching traditional platter based magnetic media, it is possible that they will be likely to die much earlier.

But, to think that magnetic media is forever is a mistake, too. All media has a MTBF rating. The way that SSD works, there are concerns that XP and OS X will be very likely to cause that MTBF to be reached more quickly.

The jury is still out on performance and power usage as well. Intuitively, SSD should be faster and need less juice, but it doesn't always work out that way. I couldn't tell you why.

My SSD based Eee PC boots faster than a traditional hard drive into XP Home, but not tremendously faster - and the battery doesn't last any appreciably longer than any other notebook I've ever had. A movie and some light web surfing will kill it.

Given the credentials -- "techno, geek, 1995(since?), IT consultant, 2 thumbs" -- a play on the misnomer is precisely what I thought he was doing.

And, given that I am a jerk, and that he is a bloke, the better question to ask is, from what disconnected place do you come?

there are FLASH SSDs, which are non-volatile. Also there are solid state drives made of DRAM. They have an internal battery (or not?) so act like non-volatile within limits. They are much faster and much more expensive than regular SSDs.

Another thought: reliability.
Sure, magnetic drives have a few million transistors in the controller chips. A terabyte solid state disk would have at least 1000 billion transistors, at one per byte, and most designs use more than one per byte. So now there are at least a TRILLION transistors. A magnetic drive would have the same trillion bits as closely packed magnetic spots which are theoretically passive but can be affected by neighboring bits, energy rays that penetrate the shielding, etc.

Undoubtedly they have ECC transistors so some could fail and still be OK but that is ALOT of transistors. Being solid state doesn't make them immune to failure. 'no moving parts' is a misnomer. The electrical current pushes thru semi-conductor junctions that have weakly bound doping atoms. Over time this causes atomic migration, a failure cause.

High voltages, such as static, lighting, power surges, if they make their way inside can speed this up and make the drive unusable. On a magnetic drive, this might just affect the controller and you could have a service bureau replace the drive electronics or pull platters out in a clean room. Don't think there would be any way to recover SSD bytes unless it is designed to allow unfailed sections to be read in special modes.

One other cause of mag drive failure, is that many years ago, 'low level formats' of disk drives stopped writing the indexing bits. These never get re-written outside the factory with special gear. So eventually get weaker. And today's hi-density drives are supposedly chock full of bad bits and heavily dependent on error correcting codes. So they are getting close to as packed as they can get with todays' technology.

So both can fail but to my view, huge solid state drives are both 'cutting edge' and 'bleeding edge', meaning they are likely to have nasty surprises. They'll eventually be compensated for by chip mfgrs and drive packagers.

They cost more, offer less space, and will likely not last as long?

Granted laptop HDD's usually don't last long anyways, at least not in modern laptops (I got an old P2 laptop with the HDD just fine, MOBO blew up and most the hardware doesn't work, but it still boots up and runs fine, just no sound/floppy/usb/ps2/pcmcia/network.)

My current HP laptop fails the SMART test horriably, though it IS still working, I suspect it will die soon, at barely even a year old (one month passed the warranty, go figure).
If this is the quality of HDD's now, what will SSD's be like?

... Bring back fujitsu drives, at least they lasted 4 years before they blew up (I got a Fuji drive from 1997 that still works fine, even passes SMART with 90% performance and 80% fitness).

I'm somebody who manages to have enough social skills to get along with people outside of my World of Warcraft guild.

You - not so much, clearly.

Palmetto...

I still don't see the Google factor as an excuse for the lack of rudimentary social grace that Santee continues to exhibit. You could certainly find a dozen reliable resources on SSD drives - and I imagine the first place I would look would be the Wiki, if I were after something similar. Sometimes you want discussion or have specific questions that you are hoping a forum conversation will lead to. There are as many reasons to ask a well published question in a particular forum as to look for articles, the least of which is simply to actually connect with people with similar interests.

Guys like Santee tend to stifle that - perhaps he would be better of as a moderator at a Wiki than a "forum contributor".

His response here was pretty typical of normal obtuse style. Some enjoy attempting to figure him out; others find him annoying. Fortunately for those in the second group, his name is easily remembered, making it easy to leave his posts unread if desired.

If you don't like him, you really won't enjoy BALTHOR.

When I said, "nice", I meant nice. When Dr Dij has anything to say, I listen and I learn. He is yet another here who has probably forgotten more than I know about the subject. And, like the original poster, who knows too much to account for the plain face of the original question.

As for letting go, consider yourself caught and released.

Well, now that you mention it, that name does ring a bell as one of the posters who has the quality of fingernails on chalk.

You're right about this guy, though... trying to figure out exactly where he is coming from and what he is trying to get across is difficult, at best. Oh well, I guess it takes all types.