Solid State Drive

Solid State Drive (SSD) is a Flash Drive with large amount amount of storage capacity. It has many advantages over a traditional hard drive such as
High Speed.
High Reliability.
Lower Power Consumption

Due to use of Flash memory there are no moving parts in SSD. This reduces the physical damaging of an SSD. There is no head to seek a particular location of the disk, thereby reducing seek time and increasing speed. As there are no spinning parts, the amount of electricity required, to spin the platter of hard drive is zero, saving electricity.

It also occupies less space as compared to hard-disk, making it more ideal for usage in portable devices like laptops. Apple is considering using a SSD for their MacBook Air.

Using SSD technology, a large amount of storage can be crammed into a small space. Recently Samsung launched its 2.5 inch 256 GB SSD which is 9.5 mm thick, and measures 100.3 mm x 69.85 mm. It offers a sequential read speed of 200 MB/s and sequential write speed of 160 MB/s, Samsung's 256 GB SSD is claimed to be about 2.4 times faster than a standard Hard drive. Samsung is expected to launch a 1.8 inch 256 GB SSD by the end of fourth quarter. Samsung claims that the its SSD uses only 0.9 watts in active mode. Samsung has also launched a 64 GB SSD, with speeds quite than the 256 GB version.

But above all these advantages, the price of SSD is the factor, that keeps it away from our reach. They are expected cost nearly $1000 as the technology is in early stages of development, once they get mainstream, they will cost as much as regular Hard Disk Drive.

But as of now, considering all facts, the Hybrid Hard Drive if the best option of enthusiasts, unless you have a lot of money to splurge on a SSD.