Summary

After spending most of our time examining the software side of things, this chapter focused solely on the actual physical hardware. Because of this, almost all of the information presented in this chapter can be considered platform-agnostic. The hardware capabilities are the same; it’s up to the software that drives the hardware to make it reach its full potential.

We discussed the three most common storage options available on the market today – rotating hard drives, SSDs, and NVMe drives. The spinning mechanical drive is one of the oldest forms of storage media available on the market today. It has gone through a few changes over the last few decades, which have improved its performance to some extent. As it consists of several mechanical components, there is a hard limit associated with its performance. After all, the spindle motor that spins its platter surface can only spin so fast. Because of limitations in the hard drive’s performance, SSDs came...