ULTRAFAST WORKSTATION STORAGE

We explore the latest software and hardware tools to see if they are worth your time or money

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are now an essential aspect of all computers, from cheap laptops right up to the high-end workstations needed for 3D design. They’ve also been around for some time now, with the first affordable desktop SSDs going on sale well over a decade ago.

SSD performance beats hard disks in both file transfer speeds and seek time, which is why you can expect your operating system to load in seconds rather than minutes, and most applications are ready to use within moments of clicking their icon. Unlike a hard disk, there’s no delay while the computer waits for a mechanical arm to move into place and there’s no performance penalty whenever data is fragmented in parts all over the disk.

Any limit on SSD performance is (generally) not down to the medium of flash memory but rather the drive’s interface with the rest of the computer. 2.5-inch drives are still the most common kind of SSD, they plug into a SATA port just like a hard disk and are therefore limited to the speed of that bus, which tops out at around 550 MB/sec.

This limitation has been overcome by completely replacing the SATA standard with a new design for SSDs that uses the much faster PCIe bus. The ‘gumstick’ M.2 form factor replaces the old 2.5-inch drive design with a far smaller storage card that plugs directly into a computer motherboard, most commonly measuring 80mm in length.

“AN NVME M.2 SSD ALSO MAKES A SUPERB EXTERNAL STORAGE DEVICE. WITH THUNDERBOLT OR USB 3.1 GEN 2, YOU CAN FINALLY SEE EXTERNAL STORAGE PERFORMANCE ECLIPSE SATA SSDs”

Transfer speeds of PCIe SSDs are many times faster than SATA. How much faster depends on how many lanes the SSD can use, and whether your computer motherboard supports PCIe 3.0 or the newer PCIe 4.0 standard.