How Solid-state Drives Work

In 1956, IBM shipped the world's first hard
disk drive, or HDD , in the RAMAC 305 system.
The drive used 50 24-inch (61-centimeter)
platters, stored a meager 5 megabytes of data
and took up more room than two refrigerators.
Oh, and the cost? Just $50,000 ($421,147 in
2012 dollars).
Since then, hard drives have grown smaller,
more capacious and, thankfully, less expensive.
For example, the Seagate Momentus laptop
hard drive, with a form factor of just 2.5
inches (6.4 centimeters), offers 750 gigabytes
of storage for less than $100. But even with
advanced protection technologies, the
Momentus drive, like all HDDs, can crash and
burn, taking precious data with it. That's
because hard drives have mechanical parts
that can fail. Drop a laptop, and the read-write
heads can touch the spinning platters. This
almost always results in severe data loss.
Luckily, a new kind of computer drive could
make crashes as obsolete as your Apple IIe.
Known as a solid-state drive, or SSD, it uses
semiconductor chips, not magnetic media, to
store data. Your computer already comes with
chips, of course. The motherboard contains
some that house your device's system memory,
or RAM, which is where information is stored
and processed when your computer is running.
Computer types refer to such memory as
volatile memory because it evaporates as
soon as your machine loses power. The chips
used in a solid-state drive deliver non-volatile
memory, meaning the data stays put even
without power. SSD chips aren't located on the
motherboard, either. They have their own
home in another part of the computer. In fact,
you could remove the hard drive of your
laptop and replace it with a solid-state drive,
without affecting any other essential
components.
But why would you want to? And what exactly
would the drive look like -- a green, printed
circuit board or a brushed-metal box
resembling a traditional hard drive? We'll
answer those questions on the following pages,
but before we give your machine a makeover,
let's review a few computer science basics.

How to install your printer

Setting up the hardware for each printer is
different and should be covered by the
manual. The software though should be pretty
similar for any Pinter. Under Windows 5 or 98,
printers aren’t added to the usual Ass new
hardware wizard. If you start up your machine
with your printer attached and on, Windows
should spot it ans start the Add printer wizard,
It will ask you to install a drive for the printer;
Windows might already have a driver for it.
It’s likely that your printer has come with a
disk or CD containing drivers that supersede
those even within Windows 98. Drivers change
so tepidly that it’s almost impossible for the
operating system to have the best ones.
You need to specify that you have a disk for
the drivers; and you may have to actually
choose the folder on a CD where the drivers
are kept. Windowa95 and 98 ask for this
different ways, but the information they need
is the same. You need to browse to the folder
that contains the inf file witch holds the driver
information . This is often not on the root.
Some CD have it in a drivers folder , or in a
Win 95 or even Win9x folder. Others have CD’s
witch contain drivers for multiple languages,
so look for a ENG folder. Any combination of
these is possible. When you locate the folder
and click OK , the dialog box should offer you
a list of printers that you can install from the
CD; your exact model should be there. When
you install the driver,you may also find extra
utilities. These do things like calibrate the
heads so that is knows they are aligned for
mixing black ink with the colors .
They may also replace the Windows print
manager witch isn’t very good. Before
printing, ensure that you preform any of the
tests the driver offers,because it might not
prompt you to do so. Go to your printers
folder from CONTROL PANELS folder and right
click on the printer’s icon and select
PROPERTIES to see all options. This is also
where you can change the detail settings for
better print outs. To get the best out of your
printer check the manufacture’s Web site for
later drivers. It’s possible that they’ve been
updated since installations.