Youd be wrong, though.
That is the view that the computer shows you.
HDDs work best if you occasionally put them through a defragmentation process.
Theyre also much faster in general, and there are plenty of other reasons to prefer them.
The thing is, SSDs suffer a lot more from wearing.
To minimize the wear and increase drive longevity, SSDs use a process called wear leveling.
When writing data, the SSD chooses to place it on the least worn cells first.
The deleted data is marked as can be overwritten rather than actively deleted.
Deleting it uses one more of the limited number of writes to the affected memory cells.
This doesnt take much space, but any operating system constantly makes small write operations.
To avoid this, most SSDs include some onboard DRAM.
Incidentally, its also faster.
Some budget SSDs choose to forego DRAM though as a cost-saving measure.
This does cause a performance impact and reduces the lifespan of the drive.
Enter HMB
HMB was designed to reduce the performance and lifespan associated with DRAM-less SSDs.
Exact implementations vary between manufacturers and drives, but around 100MB is standard.
This allows for the most commonly used data to have its location mapped for faster access.
Other data has to be accessed the slow way.
This results in improved latency in most workloads compared to straight DRAM-less SSDs.
Performance is not entirely in-line with using onboard DRAM, though.
It also helps reduce some of the wear on the SSD itself.
However, this benefit is difficult to measure and likely minimal.
Conclusion
HMB is a helpful addition to DRAM-less SSDs.
It comes at literally no extra monetary cost.
It helps to alleviate a good portion of the performance degradation associated with DRAM-less SSDs.
HMB still doesnt offer the same level of performance as onboard DRAM.
