Looking for a reason to try new hardware? Experience the benefits of SSDs

Like you, we are constantly adapting our hardware and technology to keep at the forefront of our industry. When new boards and systems are launched we are first to identify if it has any positive benefit in our product range. This is true also for our range of peripherals.

Up until recently, solid state storage has always been an expensive technology reserved only for high end specialist enterprise applications. More recently however, there has been a rise in the adoption of Solid State Drives in the consumer computing industry. This sudden growth in demand for Solid State Drives has moved manufacturers to produce a cost effective alternative to traditional hard drives.

What are Solid State Drives?

Unlike traditional mechanical hard drives, which are made up of a series of magnetic platters, motors and reading arms, Solid State Drives contain flash memory. Flash memory is found in a wide range of every day products including smart phones, digital cameras and USB memory sticks.

What are the benefits of Solid State Drives?

When we first looked into solid state storage technology, we quickly identified the advantage it can bring to the industrial computing market. As explained by our Technical Manager, Chris Durose, the physical properties of Solid State Drives are very desirable in our industry.

“Solid State Drives offer a number of advantages over traditional magnetic hard drives. The main benefit being that Solid State Drives have no moving parts. With no moving parts, Solid State Drives are not affected by jolts, drops and vibrations.

In addition, Solid State Drives are not affected by magnetic fields and produce very little heat. These kinds of features are desirable in the industrial market where electromagnetic interference and high environmental temperatures are common.”

Thanks to not having to rely on power hungry motors, Solid State Drives consume over 20% less energy than its mechanical counterpart and produce no sound. With no mechanical parts to fail, many of the Solid State Drive manufacturers have published MTBF figures that double that of mechanical hard drives.

In addition to its physical properties, Solid State Drives also bring a number of performance advantages. For example, operating system boot up time is approximately 1.5 times faster compared to mechanical drives. Software has been noted to load within seconds and reading and writing data can reach speeds of up to 500MB/s.

With so many benefits, as well as a lower overall total cost of ownership, it is no wonder why we are taking full advantage of Solid State Drives as a rugged and reliable alternative to mechanical hard drives.

If you would like to trial a Solid State Drive in your next embedded system or would like to know more about solid state technology, then contact our technical account team on +44 (0)1782 337 800 or email sales@impulse-corp.co.uk.

Related links
Alternative high performance storage solutions available at Impulse