Anatomy of a Solid-state Drive: While the ubiquitous SSD shares many features with the hard-disk drive, under the surface they are completely different.

Over the past several years, a new type of storage device has entered laptops and data centers, fundamentally changing expectations regarding the power, size, and performance dynamics of storage. The SSD (solid-state drive) is a technology that has been around for more than 30 years but remained too expensive for broad adoption.