Performance, reliability and efficiency, the three advantages of SSD storage

Storage in solid state drives or SSD (for the acronym in English of Solid-State Drive) replaces the mechanisms of traditional hard drives by chips that work with electrical impulses. What advantages does SSD storage offer when we use it in hosting? 
Better performance, more reliability, and lower energy consumption, three characteristics more than valued in the development of any technological project. Especially when we talk about high concurrences and we have databases in between.

From the popular USB memories or MP3 players, storage based on SSD technology is making the leap progressively to other technological devices  (laptops, desktop computers, external hard drives, etc.), and begins to be implemented in the hosting solutions of advanced range, taking over progressively from traditional hard drives or HDD, by the acronym of Hard Disk Drive.

The HDD storage is based on mechanical heads that record data magnetically on a disk; something that, simplifying, we could compare with the traditional turntables, with heads that move on the layers of the disk to access or modify the information. However, SSD technology replaces magnetic recording with chips that record and access the data by electrical impulses, without mechanisms.

By dispensing with these moving parts, SSD storage offers greater speed of writing and reading, which translates into better performance by reducing access times to information; that is, the time it takes to locate the information before it can be read or written. In general, a solid state disk is up to ten times faster then a platter hard disk or you can have to hire hard drive service.

However, we also have to be aware that we are talking about access times measured in milliseconds. This difference may be slightly noticeable for home users, but when talking about a dynamic web project with databases or pages with a high number of concurrent visits, things change. We must multiply every millisecond difference for as many processes and queries as the system requires and, therefore, these milliseconds can significantly affect performance and make a difference. In fact, using SSD can be one of the best options to improve the performance of many IT projects.

After all, and to give an example: how many times have we not completed an online purchase because the process took too long? According to some studies, buyers are willing to wait a maximum of two seconds to load a page and 40% of users leave the page if it is not displayed within three seconds. So a second of difference is not, far from it, something banal when talking about access to a web page.

Performance improvement is not the only advantage of SSD storage. This technology also provides greater reliability in reading and recording data. Since they do not have physical mechanisms, they do not generate heat or noise, so they do not need a fan, one of the many hardware elements that can fail in the HDD; nor do vibrations that deteriorate the reading and writing processes and can generate corrupt data or the inability to access information.

And, again, that absence of mechanisms also brings another important advantage. By not having to turn and move elements, such as a head or fan, the power consumption of the SSD is much lower:  between two and three times less, depending on the process, although some studies claim that the percentage can reach 80%.