Hi Kevin,

It's a Solid State Drive. Below is an article that might answer some of
your questions.

Does Using an SSD Make a Difference?



Hi,



Liz Cornwell here. Recently we've started receiving a lot of questions about
SSDs. Does using an SSD make a difference? How to deal with SSDs? Should
they be defragged? So, as per your request, I'm going to shed some light on
SSDs in this newsletter.



First of all, I'd like to remind you what SSDs are. Basically, a solid-state
drive (SSD) is a data storage device, just like your hard drive. Unlike hard
drives, SSDs use NAND flash memory to store data, which makes them a lot
faster.



Does using an SSD make a difference?



Absolutely! SSDs are electronic devices and don't have any mechanical parts.
This means that there is literally nothing to slow them down. Once you have
an SSD, you'll be rid of the worst performance bottleneck. When you install
an SSD, everything else you did to boost performance will seem
insignificant. And there is more good news - file fragmentation doesn't
affect SSDs because they can grab fragmented files just as quickly as
non-fragmented files. In addition to that, using an SSD is a lot more
pleasant than using a hard drive because SSDs are quieter and don't suffer
from physical shock as much as HDDs do.



Sounds great, doesn't it? But there are a few things you need to keep in
mind when you are using an SSD. The most important thing to remember is that
SSD flash memory can only endure a certain number of writes. It's a pretty
large number, but still. That's why it's good to do everything you can to
reduce the number of writes and thus prolong the lifetime of your SSD.



Should you defragment an SSD?



This is another common question and the answer is "No". As I said before,
conventional defragmentation doesn't improve the performance of an SSD in
any noticeable ways.



You might argue and say that there are articles recommending to defrag SSDs
and various software that supports SSD defrag. Well, all I can say is that
these articles are written by people who choose an insignificant performance
gain over stability and reliability. Remember I said that you need to reduce
the number of writes? Well, conventional defrag performs plenty of writes,
doing your SSD no good. As for the SSD defrag software, reputable programs
don't actually attempt to defrag SSDs - all they do is apply file placement
optimization algorithms.



By the way, even Microsoft recognizes that SSDs don't need to be defragged.
If you have a system with an SSD, scheduled defragmentation in Windows 7 is
disabled by default when the operating system is installed on an SSD from
scratch.





Auslogics BoostSpeed



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Take care.
Mike
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