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One of the main components of a computer is the data storage system. In most of cases the hardware used for this task is a hard disk drive (HDD), but thanks to the price drop of flash memories Solid State Drives (SSD) emerged recently as an alternative solution.

The main advantages of SSD over classic HDD are the lower power consumption (a more than welcome feature in laptops and portable devices to improve battery autonomy) and the very high speed. The main drawback of SSD, however, is the limited number of read/write cycles: flash memory can be read/write only a fixed number of times, after that the chip becomes damaged.

Another drawback of SSD compared to HDD is the higher price and the much lower total capacity (currently largest HDDs have a capacity of 1TB). However, there is also another alternative to build a data storage system for computers: the i-RAM cards.

i-RAM devices are PCI or PCI-e cards that uses RAM memory for storing data. Currently, RAM memories are faster than any HDD or SSD available in the market, so these devices are a very interesting solution to install an operating system on a machine, allowing a very fast boot. The worst drawback of RAM memories is that are volatile, i.e. when the power is switched off, all data is lost. To avoid this, i-RAM cards are provided with a battery, but it is anyway a very risky place to put important data.

If you are interested to read more about these three alternatives, Xbit Labs published an interesting article comparing these three data storage systems. A deep analysis of their performance can be found not only regarding speed, but also about power consumption. Guess who is the winner...

 

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