Solid-State Drive (SSD): A Nonvolatile Storage System

Over the last 15 years, NAND Flash memories have changed our lives: Flash cards [mainly in the secure digital (SD) form factor] have almost completely replaced photographic films, and USB keys have driven floppy disks to extinction. Lately, thanks to a great tradeoff between cost and performance (i.e., write/read speed), NAND Flash technology has begun fighting against hard disk drives (HDDs) in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs).