The SSD is now 35 years old

Did you know that the SSD is 35 years old now?

Tough to imagine that since we've been starting to SSDs more than ever since the mid-2010s but it's true.

We all know what an SSD is,

Flash Storage with no moving parts, unlike a hard disk which is a spinning platter and read-head arm system.

But the development of the SSD goes all the way back to the year 1991,

In that year, 

Sandisk(Originally referred to as SUNDISK) demonstrated a way to make FLASH STORAGE that uses less ammount of power, performs much faster, and doesn't use moving parts...

Plus, it be NON-VOLATILE meaning that even if the power is cut off either through a power button press, unplugging, or power outage, 

The SDD would still retain it's contents.

Although the SANDISK SSD you see up there was meant to connect to an IBM compatible system using the IDE(or SCSI) interface,

Not many people flocked to their COMPUTER STORES like COMPUSA, CIRCUIT CITY, BEST BUYs, etc.

Just to buy an SSD for their PC.

Remember, This was 1991.

Most people had 386 or 486 machines,

And RAM prices were INSANE back in the day so not many people had maxed out systems due to the higher cost.

(Not helping matters was GEORGE H.W. BUSH'S 1990 TAX HIKE)

So SSDs had a far lower capacity back then due to the higher cost.

(A 20MB SSD for an IBM PS/2 LAPTOP cost US$1,000 back in 1991)

In the later years, the SSD became better as the speeds improved as well as the cost per GIGABYTE lowered but even then as we entered the beginning of the 2010s,

The SSD still wasn't ideal.

Remember Netbooks like them HP MINI's?

They came in two configurations:

One with a large capacity 2.5" hard drive

&

One with a limited capacity (but still faster) 2.5" SSD.

It wasn't until sometime around after 2015 that motherboards started to include this thing:

While the earliest INTEL motherboards started to have M.2 SLOTS, not many people I knew started to use them unless they were really savvy or really curious about the speed difference.

I first knew about M.2 SSDs with my previous MSI Laptop

which had a single SSD slot already installed with a KINGSTON model

Then I got my PS5 in March 2021 and It had a slot to install an M.2 SSD, to which I still haven't put one in there..... yet....

And now almost all of my Computers us M.2 for their INTERNAL storage.

For example,

My rebuilt MAVERICK X870E Desktop uses a SANDISK M.2 SSD to hold my WINDOWS 11 PRO  OS alongside it's Device Drivers due to issues with my previous SILICON POWER SSD from the previous FALCON 7900RT having some issues when it loses connectivity after BSOD.....

And it was about time I went with a respected brand anyway.....

And when I bought my 1TB SSD from SANDISK back in JULY 2026, I realized that the purchase was made during the 35th anniversary of the tech behind the SSDs.

How fitting.

Yeah, there are other SOLID STATE solutions like SD CARDS, USB DRIVES, COMPACT FLASH, etc. 

But they are a league of their own.

My mentioning of SSDs are mostly focused on the SATA & M.2 SSDs.