Solid-state drives are a new technology in recent years. SSDs are different from traditional hard disk drives in that there are no moving parts. A series of flash memory modules provide the same functionality as traditional hard drive platters, rotating magnetic disks that store the data. There are several advantages to SSDs: silent operation, a faster start-up period because there are no platters that have to reach their optimum spinning speed, and twice the data density of hard disk drives. There are disadvantages, as well: data can become easily degraded in solid-state drives because of the relative density of the materials used to construct them. This is compensated for in most cases by spreading the usage out over all the modules on a drive.

Solid-state drives use less power and less energy when operating, which means the computer has more energy to distribute to other operations. Data can be accessed faster because there is no time needed for data to be read off spinning disks, as in a hard disk drive. The biggest disadvantage for solid-state drives is cost: most SSDs cost as much as an entire laptop computer. This is a tremendous block for the consumer market in terms of ability to purchase. SSDs have actually been around for a number of years, but the costs have always been too high for market penetration to commence.