Flash memory
Completely solid state
No moving parts
- remember data by storing charge
- Lower power consumption and heat
- No mechanical seek times to worry about
Limitations
Limited number of overwrites possible
- Blocks wear out after 10000-100000 erases
- Requires flash translation layer (FTL) to provide wear levelling
- Repeated writes to logical block don’t wear out physical block
- Even out wear
- FTL can seriously impact performance
Limited durability
- Charge wears out over time
- Can lose data if power off for a year