Once categorized as esoteric and obscenely unaffordable, the substantial benefits of solid state drives are increasingly coveted. SSDs are among the fastest selling items in consumer electronics today.
Early prototypes were developed by 1975 and a few consumer products briefly appeared in1982. Flash memory, now used in all modern SSDs, first appeared in 1995 in military and industrial settings. It was not until 2005 that the first mass market SSD arrived. Samsung released a 32 GB SSD for “only” $699, igniting a market explosion that continues to this day.
It’s easy to see the major advantages of an SSD over the more commonplace hard disk drive (HDD).