SSD Flash Memory - MLC, TLC, and SLC
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
978 words · ~4 min read
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a common piece of advice given to new computer tinkerers is that the single
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best upgrade you can give especially an older PC is a solid state drive or an
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SSD not only because this removes the hard drive bottleneck but also because
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in general any SSD is going to give you a significant performance boost even if
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you don't agonize for hours over the exact model you're going to buy and just
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end up spending 10 seconds picking out the highest rated one on Amazon but many
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many of you also have higher performance
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requirements than simply faster than a hard drive so today we're following up
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on our guide on which SSD to buy which
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you can check out here with an explanation of the different kinds of
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flash memory that you'll find not only in ssds but also in things like
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removable memory cards and USB thumb drives So currently SSD flash memory
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comes in a few main flavors s SLC mlc
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and TLC which you will sometimes find in
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the SSD product description but unfortunately not always which sucks
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because these three things could have a huge impact on the performance of your
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drive but how well the letter c c yeah
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that way in these variety stands for
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cell as in the memory cells in your ssds
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that store data so depending on the type
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each cell can hold a different number of bits that is the zeros and ones that
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make up all Digital Data a single level cell or SLC can hold just one bit per
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cell while triple level cells or TLC's
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can store three bits per cell NLC
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actually stands for multi-level cell so technically TLC is a subset but mlc is
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commonly used to refer to two bits per cell
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so it shouldn't be surprising then that TLC which can store the most bits per
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cell offers higher capacities in fact
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their higher data density also makes them cheaper per Gigabyte but there's a
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caveat here remember that ssds only last
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for a certain number of right cycles and
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since the electronics in TLC's requires
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more rights per sell because they store more they don't last as long as ml C's
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and slc's and they also tend to be significantly slower for these reasons
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you will mostly find TLC flash on
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lower-end ssds and portable storage
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devices instead most mainstream and
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higher-end consumer ssds these days use
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mlc Flash which represents a nice compromise between data density
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longevity performance and price these
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drives tend to last anywhere between twice to 10 times as long as TLC ssds
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while being quite a bit faster and while you can't cram as much data on an mlc
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SSD for the same cost they still represent a good value proposition
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whether you just need a small SSD to use as a boot drive or even something larger
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for mass storage SLC drives due to only
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storing one bit per cell are even faster still and can last for 100,000 right
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Cycles the downside though as you can possibly guess is that they are quite
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expensive so they're usually only found in Enterprise settings where the fastest
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speeds and high reliability are a must
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of course there are other important ways that the flash memory in different
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drives can vary such as more recently
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with the availability of 3D nand which uses memory cells stacked in a 3D
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configuration to significantly increase data density you can learn more about
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that in this video so while nearly any
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SSD will give you better performance than your clunky old mechanical Drive
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deciding between TLC and mlc with SLC
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not being really relevant unless you're you know contract buying thousands of
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drives at once in a data center can be important if you're really going to be
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putting your drive through the paces whether you're a video editor running a
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new server or you just like to run benchmarks all the time because your
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