Difference between hard drive and SSD

joboy · 06-17-2016, 02:52 AM

Hi there,

I am testing various Linux distro mostly Debian based on a 128GB SSD drive, most of the distro worked without problem, it seems they treated the SSD like an ordinarily hard drive, but for one distro I can't recall which one, did not install on SSD, it does not even see the drive, so what's the difference between the two as seen by Linux ?

Timothy Miller · 06-17-2016, 03:13 AM

Depends, is it a normal SSD? Many Chromebooks and their Windows competitors use eMMC drives. While they are strictly speaking SSD's, their controllers make them visible as embedded multimedia card drives (eMMC), NOT as a "typical" hard drive. Some distro's DO have issues with these, although most distro's in the last few years have gotten much better since Chromebooks have become so much more popular. Your 128 is PROBABLY NOT an eMMC, but that's the first thing I think of if an SSD isn't recognized.

jefro · 06-17-2016, 05:55 PM

The SSD should be seen by all distro's as one of a few ways. Very old and legacy distro's see the drive as a hard drive. /dev/hdax and such. Newer distros and the majority of them see it as a SCSI so you get /dev/sdax. The type of drive you have basically isn't known to the OS at all. The part that may fail however is the chipset that connects the drive to the motherboard.