More testing lives for SSD testing than you may think (hard drives apply too!)
As hard drives have developed over the years, the capacities have grown and reliability has also increased. Larger cache sizes as well as technologies such as sector remapping, S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology) have emerged along with manufacturers offering lifetime warranties on the drives they manufacture.
Technologies and specifications are changing at a fast pace within the hard drive industry, and it is important to always use current diagnostic tools that are designed for these changes.
Eurosoft’s diagnostic packages Pc-Check and Pc-Check Windows each include powerful hard drive testing groups containing a range of effective, up-to-date, reliable tests including S.M.A.R.T. status tests.
But what about SSD?
Another change in hard drive technology is the emergence of SSD (Solid State Drives).
Unlike standard HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) which store data electromechanically on moving disk media, SSDs store data electrically on non-volatile flash memory chips and have no moving parts.
Compared to electromechanical HDDs, SSDs are typically less susceptible to physical shock, are silent, and have lower access time and latency.
On the flip side however, SSD costs significantly more per megabyte of storage when compared to HDD. Also, current SSD technology suffers from a functional degradation known as write amplification. Write amplification gradually reduces the performance of NAND flash memory cells. Blocks of a flash-based SSD can only be erased and written a limited number of times before they fail.
Not only are SSDs different from HDDs in the physical sense, they are also different in the way they operate. SSDs use complex data management schemes to distribute data across the memory. Because of these differences, using an HDD diagnostic on SSD is not an option.
Fortunately, Eurosoft has you covered. Pc-Check Windows extensive hardware coverage includes a test group for SSD. Because of the limited life of memory cells in SSDs, the SSD test group features a group of tests that are optimized with non-destructive read algorithms. The tests are designed to thoroughly test SSDs while not degrading their life with unnecessary erases and writes. The SSD test group includes a Linear Read test, Random Read test, S.M.A.R.T. Status test, and an Advanced S.M.A.R.T. test.
Whether you’re testing HDD, SDD, Removable Media, USB, or Optical Devices, Eurosoft has your media testing needs covered.
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