If you're in the market for an SSD or solidstate drive, chances are that
you're thinking about things like capacity and speed. But if you've ever
read a more in-depth review of an SSD, you've probably seen talk about drive
controllers and how they have the potential to make or break a drive's
overall performance. But what exactly is a drive controller? Well, think of it
this way. If you were to go to the local hardware store and just buy a toolbox,
it's not very useful unless you're putting stuff in it. And while it's
possible to use your toolbox just by dumping stuff in it willy-nilly, you'll
get a lot more out of your general toolbox experience by sorting your
pliers and nails and whatnot into the little compartments. So, it'll be easier
to find stuff when it comes time to tackle your next big project. This
process of sorting your stuff in a storage container is very similar to
what an SSD controller does. Just like a toolbox can't sort the tools itself, the
flash cells on your SSD that store data need something that can fill them up
sensibly with ones and zeros and talk to
the rest of your computer. The SATA data connector on your SSD is wired directly
into your SSD's controller, which processes the data and then sends it to
your drive's flash memory. So, because the controller is responsible for
actually putting data onto the SSD, lower-end ones can create a bottleneck
or even be less reliable due to hardware
and/or firmware differences. Unfortunately, the reasons behind why
one controller is better than the other aren't always clear because
manufacturers treat controller designs like trade secrets. So, it's a little
hard to analyze Sandforce's signature blend of 11 herbs and spices compared to
Samsung's secret sauce that actually just turns out to be Thousand Island.
But what we can tell you is that nicer controllers in higherend drives are
connected to many memory cells at once
for faster throughput. A little bit like how GPUs contain many compute cores that
work in parallel to help you get higher frame rates. But what are some of the
other important ways a controller keeps data flowing smoothly? Well, one of
these is wear leveling. Unlike a traditional mechanical hard drive that
will generally last until the moving parts wear out, SSD flash cells can only
be written and rewritten so many times. So, imagine a shelf. Instead of always
putting data on the lowest, easiest to reach one, the controller will try to
write all cells evenly to extend the usable life of the drive as a whole.
Controllers also handle a couple very important features called garbage
collection and trim. Unlike hard drives
where data can just be overwritten at will, SSDs store data in blocks that
must first be erased before new data can be written. Garbage collection handles
this by marking certain parts of data within the block as stale if they're
okay to be replaced with newer data. Moving the remainder of the still good
data to a new block, then finally erasing the old one. The problem with
this is that when you go to delete a file, garbage collection doesn't mark
the deleted data as stale. So, garbage collection actually keeps copying this
data to new blocks, needlessly using up
write cycles. This is where trim comes in. An operating system command that
tells your SSD controller which pieces of data within a block are actually
parts of deleted files so they won't stick around. both improving performance
and increasing the lifespan of your drive, which is critical if you want
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