Most computers today might have what has traditionally been a mechanical hard drive; a noisy metal rectangle shaped box about 3.5 inches wide that generates a lot of heat and has little metal platters inside that spin about several thousand times a minute and holds your data and computer programs. But there is a new challenger on the block that is taking the computing world by storm, and for very good reason: it is so much better.

Mechanical hard drives are very, very common. Trouble is, they are very susceptible to damage and wear. Yes you may have one that lasts years, but many a hard drive has been found that has “crashed”, that is, the little “arm” inside the drive that sweeps over the metal plates to read your data has either scrapped or seriously damaged the metal platters, taking all of your data with it. In most instances, your data is irrecoverable. They are also incredibly sensitive to movement and a simple accidental drop or bump (even if the computer is off) could potentially kill the drive pretty quickly. A painful lesson for those who do not have a recent (or any) backup of their data.

The new drives, called SSD drives (the SSD stands for Solid State Device), use a special computer chip for storing your data, and these gems bring with them many, many benefits. Some of these are; [1] Using less than a tenth of the power that traditional hard drives use (save on your power bill!), [2] Have absolutely no moving parts that can wear out, which eliminates any chance of mechanical problems, [3] They produce very, very little heat, whereas a mechanical drive can get so warm they are too hot to touch! [4] They can be bumped, dropped, prodded and left in extreme temperature conditions and still be fully functional. In fact, you can do all of the above to an SSD drive while it is turned on and it still won’t be affected, [5] they are really fast. SSD drives can read your data over 1000 times faster than mechanical drives. Yes, that fast.

The only disadvantage with SSD drives is the same for every introduction of a new technology; they can be expensive and offer lower storage capacity than current desktop systems might have. However, all that was months ago, and today, they are more affordable, offer more capacity and they are more popular than ever.

A drive that is ultra reliable (even when the drive eventually goes bad, data rescue is much easier), ultra fast, produces very little to no heat, uses practically no electricity to run and is completely silent. That sounds like the perfect device for your computer. Fast, Reliable and Affordable. Mechanical drives used to make us choose two out of those three options with a compromise on a third option. Today SSD drives offer all three. They work just fine with the new Windows 7 too.