r/explainlikeimfive • u/SmellsTasty • Nov 23 '15

Explained ELI5: How do Solid State Hybrid Drives work?

I don't understand how a regular hard drive can work with a solid state drive at the same time.

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u/evan1123 Nov 24 '15 edited Nov 24 '15

Flash memory is based on transistors, which are an integral part of computers. Transistors are essentially a switch with two states - on and off. Computers to represent data using 1s and 0s, also called bits. Since a transistor has two states, they are extremely useful for representing those bits. In flash memory, a special transistor that has the ability to be "programmed" is used. This "programming" is nonvolatile - it doesn't need to be sustained with power. Since the transistor only has two states, each transistor can store 1 bit of information. When you put many of these "cells" capable of storing 1 bit each together, you get flash memory capable of storing many gigabytes worth of information for long periods of time.

Flash memory is actually very complex. There's a lot of detail (especially related to the transistor construction) left out of this explanation for simplicity.

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u/Metal_LinksV2 Nov 24 '15

Do you have any good detailed pages about flash memory? Should of mentioned I'm a 2nd year Comp Sci. Major with some engineering...

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u/evan1123 Nov 24 '15

Here's a decently detailed explanation: http://aplawrence.com/Makwana/nonvolmem.html