NAND Hard Drives stands for Not And Hard Drives which is a high capacity and very fast solid state disk. NAND defines the architecture of this special type of solid state drive and differentiates it from the NOR Drives which stands for Not Or Drives. Till date there had been several advancements in the field of computer technology since the day they were invented. With passing time, they have become smaller in size and larger in efficiency. The previous bulky storage devices have been replaced by smaller flash drives and several other types of memory chips and NAND Drives are one of the latest in the series. The NAND Drives are data storage devices without any moving parts unlike the traditional hard disk drives.
The structure of a NAND Drive is similar to any other solid state disks. Previously magnetic tapes were used in the hard disk drives to store data, but in the solid state disks, it uses semiconductors to store data and information. The solid state disks require much less power and hence add to better power utilization. They are also much resistant to damage and tend to last longer. They are resistant to damage due to sudden impacts and vibrations. The drives also do not require a fan to keep it cool since it does not involve any moving parts unlike the regular hard drives and as a result they are about 50% lighter, thus making it more easy to use. The NAND Drives are built mostly on the 2.5” size which is the regular size of a hard disk of the laptops. But it can also be used with the 3.5” slots of the desktops with the help of an adapter.
A NAND Drive can be differentiated from the NOR drives in respect of cost, size and usage. NOR Drives are mostly found on mobiles and PDA’s where as NAND drives are used on laptops and desktops. NAND Drives are also much more cost effective than the NOR Drives and are smaller in size. The NAND Drives also works much faster than the NOR Drives and are also more durable than them. It has a longer span thus making it one of the latest and best choices to be used for high capacity storage and faster usage.
The NAND Hard Drives bears very little chance of crashing and are hence finding application in many places. They are silent and power consumption is much lesser than the traditional hard disk drives. However the only drawback of the NAND Drives is its extremely high pricing, which is the only limitation to its use. However research works are still being carried out for further improvements and is expected to appear in most of the machines within a couple of years.