Types of storage drives: what is the ideal solution for your VPS
Storage drives are used for important processes and performance increase. They are used both in laptops, home computers, and in server shells. Hard Drive is an integral and one of the most important parts for every server: be it dedicated, virtual or shared hosting. Its functions include a lot of important roles, such as: ensuring the operation of your OS, storing and processing information, accumulating data, and so on. Server disks first appeared in the middle of the last century. During this time, they have evolved very strongly: from a magnetic storage device to a semiconductor flash memory. Today, the following types of drives are classified: HDD (hard disk drive) and SSD (solid-state drive) and NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) solid-state drives.
| Drive (disk) type | Working speed (max. value) | Number of processed data (sec.) |
| HDD | Up to 100 MB/s | Up to 100 |
| SSD | Up to 50 MB/s | Up to 100,000 |
| NVMe | Up to 3,500 MB/s | Up to 500,000 |
About the Storage Drives
There are a lot of reasons why you should switch from a regular SSD to the NVMe SSD format. However, each user will draw conclusions for himself, because convenience is what we strive for. But did you know that:
- Is the NVMe SSD capable of 12 times the speed when reading files, and 6 times for writing them? Also, this type of disk is very powerful and for this reason, it has a 4x increase in speed for queries against your databases.
- Price. We all understand that more comfortable service, speed, loading are more expensive. In this case, with disk types, there is no exception. In this case, Hostry provides this type of disc in their locations, which is great! You can get a server with an NVMe SSD for almost the same price as a regular SSD! This type of disk is provided at the current locations:
- Reliability. Types of drives NVMe SSD, unlike a conventional SSD, is not subject to shock. Moreover, there is protection against vibrations and the complete absence of moving parts, because they are prone to breakdowns. This type of disk is also very widely used in a wide range of temperatures and voltages. The process of reading and processing data continues to work and be active even when the memory is full.
In the process of studying this type of disk (NVMe SSD), you can find that they have their own interface for processing a large number of requests at the same time. In turn, this is due to the fact that there is a great influence on the speed of loading the site and its performance. Naturally, in a positive way, compared to conventional SSDs, where the site loads twice as fast (with a regular SSD – 1.19 s, with an NVMe SSD – 0.58 s). This matters to us as it gives priority to our customers. By the way, Non-Volatile Memory Express technology appeared back in 2011.
The reason for the appearance was precisely the elimination of various bottlenecks of SATA interfaces. PCIe 4.0 (current version) provides up to 32 lanes and can theoretically transfer data at up to 64,000 MB/s, compared to the SATA III specification limit of 600 MB/s. NVMe technology creates huge potential for storage devices by improving efficiency, performance and interoperability across a wide range of systems. It was believed that this technology would become the new industry standard.
NVM Express is an interface for accessing solid state drives connected via the PCI Express bus. The type of connector and the design of NVMe media can be different. M.2, U.2 drives (design-compatible with SATA 2.5″ drives) and PCI Express expansion cards are common. SATA Express drives and compact internal M.2 form factor drives also support NVM Express when using PCIe as one of the logical interfaces.
High-performance SSDs connected to the PCI Express bus were produced before NVMe, but either used unique closed standards and technologies for optimizing flash memory, or were a SATA or SAS controller and several SSDs with SATA / SAS interfaces placed on the same board. The transition to NVMe has standardized the PCIe SSD interface – manufacturers no longer need to spend resources on developing unique drivers, connectors and form factors