A solid-state drive (SSD) improves the performance of any app running on it as compared to a regular hard-disk drive (HDD). The reason is that a solid-state drive functions with multiple interconnected flash memory modules, so there're no physical parts to move. In contrast, an HDD features spinning disks and any reading or writing process causes the disks to spin, meaning the speed of an HDD is restricted. Because the cost of the two types of drives are also different, a large number of desktops and web servers are set up with an SSD for the OS and various applications, and a hard disk for file storage, in this way balancing cost and performance. A web hosting provider may also use an SSD for caching purposes, thus files which are used repeatedly will be located 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 Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you register for one of our semi-dedicated server plans, we'll keep your content on SSD drives and this is valid not just for the files, but also for all databases and email messages. This way, your script-driven apps and webmail will load very quickly. We employ dedicated SSDs for caching too. Traffic-intensive site content is duplicated automatically on these drives, so we ensure that a few heavy sites that generate plenty of reading and writing processes can't impact the other sites which share the very same drive. By reducing the overall load we also raise the lifespan of the primary storage drives and reduce the chance of a disk failure, so by employing SSD drives for caching purposes, we add another level of stability for your website content.