9 USB Storage Devices That Fit in Your Pocket
Keeping your mind on memory
A new contender
As you're probably aware, other kinds of digital storage exist. You're not slotting a hard drive in your point-and-shoot camera, nor is there a hard drive in your USB flash drive. These other types of storage are solid-state storage.
As the name implies, a solid-state drive (SSD) is like a hard drive, but it's solid; it has no moving parts. Instead of magnetism, SSDs use very complex electronics to store and retrieve data. An SSD is very similar to any other computer chip in your computer (such as the CPU), but it only reads, writes, and stores data.
Fundamental differencesThere are some key differences between how hard disk drives and solid-state drives operate. Fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that HDDs have moving components, while SSDs are simply computer chips. Just like other mechanical, physical things — from cars to baseballs — the disks in a hard drive can only move so fast. An SSD with no moving parts is limited only by the manufacturer's technological prowess and the speed of light.
Because of those moving parts, HDDs use more electricity and generate more noise when the internal disks spin faster. This causes wear and tear on the drive, eventually causing them to fail and break. Without any moving parts, SSDs are much more reliable over time.
What the differences mean to you
It definitely sounds like solid-state drives have the edge on hard disk drives — but don't count your bytes just yet. HDDs are tried and tested commodities of the tech industry while SSDs are only just coming in to common use. SSDs are still very expensive and can only store a few hundred gigabytes of data, while hard drives can comfortably store over 2 terabytes for less than $100. There is such a disparity in price that for the same price as a 2TB hard drive, you can only get a 30GB solid-state drive; in other words, you can have roughly 2,000 gigabytes of storage on your hard disk drive or 30 gigabytes of storage on your solid-state drive, for a comparable price.
In case you're wondering, you can't fit a whole lot on 30 gigabytes. You could just about install Windows 7 on it, but don't expect to keep any videos or music! But if you wanted a roomy 2TB solid-state drive, you'd be looking at paying thousands of dollars.
So why, then, are solid-state drives growing in popularity? Because they are fast — much faster than hard drives — and because they are small and light. SSDs are ideal for laptops, netbooks, and tablets, and that's where they are predominantly used today.
A working compromise
Realistically, if you want the speed of a solid-state drive but you still need the storage provided by a cheap hard drive, your best bet is to use both! You can buy a smaller SSD for around $100 and install your operating system and programs on it. This will make your computer and any installed programs start up a lot faster. You can then use a conventional hard drive to store photos, videos, and other large amounts of data.
Another option is to use a hybrid drive, which combines both a solid-state drive and hard disk drive, netting you most of the benefits of both technologies.
Hard drives head the way of the dodo
There is no doubt that solid-state drives will eventually become the dominant storage medium, but it won't happen for a few years yet. As every other computer component gets faster and faster, hard drives will simply fail to keep up and will be installed in fewer and fewer computers — but they won't just disappear. Solid-state drives have a long way to go before they can match hard drives in terms of maximum capacity and dollar-per-gigabyte.
[Image credit: fDhooghe, kliverap]
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