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IT Support & Hardware · Foundational

Solid-State Drive (SSD)

A storage device using NAND flash memory with no moving parts, offering fast access and low latency.

Definition

SSDs are faster, quieter, and more shock-resistant than HDDs. They connect via SATA (about 550 MB/s), or NVMe over PCIe (several GB/s), in 2.5-inch, M.2, or U.2 form factors. Flash cells wear with writes, so endurance is rated in terabytes written (TBW).

Example

Replacing an HDD with a SATA SSD cuts a laptop's boot time from 90 seconds to 15 seconds.

Exam tip

Do not defragment SSDs; Windows sends TRIM/optimize instead.

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