A solid-state drive (SSD) enhances the performance of any application running on it compared with a common hard-disk drive (HDD). The reason is that a solid-state drive uses many different interconnected flash memory units, so there're no physical parts to move. In contrast, an HDD employs spinning disks and every reading or writing process causes the disks to rotate, which means that the speed of an HDD is restricted. Since the prices of the two types of drives are also different, a large number of computer systems and web servers are equipped with an SSD for the operating system and random applications, and a hard-disk drive for data storage, thus balancing price and efficiency. A hosting provider may also use an SSD for caching purposes, thus files that are accessed repeatedly will be stored on this type of a drive for accomplishing better loading speeds and for reducing the reading/writing processes on the hard drives.
SSD with Data Caching in Website Hosting
The cloud platform where we create website hosting accounts uses exclusively SSD drives, so your web applications and static sites will open very quickly. The SSDs are used for files, e-mails and databases, so no matter if you load a page or check for new e-mail messages through webmail, the content will load promptly. To offer even greater speeds, we also use a number of dedicated SSDs which work only as cache. Any content that generates lots of traffic is copied on them automatically and is later on read from them and not from the main storage drives. Needless to say, that content is replaced dynamically for much better efficiency. What we achieve that way aside from the better speed is reduced overall load, thus lower possibility of hardware failures, and extended lifespan of the main drives, which is one more level of protection for any information that you upload to your account.