So I understand the information is stored in billions or trillions of microscopic transistors that represent 1 or 0 depending on the charge and they remain in that state even after the PC is off but how does the SSD know which transistors to read when I want to open a picture I saved the day before?
In: Technology
There are tables that list the address of files so that they can be found later, think of it like a giant phone book.
You want to see John Smith 17772 so you flip through the phone book(File table) and it tells you they’re on 12 main street in townytown (file address), and you send the disk controller to go fetch him for you.
For hard drives the addresses are in order on the disk, there’s no remapping going on, but SSDs need to move things around so they don’t wear out so they have another file table in their controller that says the physically location of the file, not just the “listed” location. Its like they’re a giant apartment building that doesn’t have individual numbers for everyone. You come asking for John Smith 17772 and the door man flips through his little book until he hits the line that says “Chip 3, Page 5, Block 52” and then he pushes the right buttons on the elevator to read data from Chip 3 Page 5 Block 52 and the contents of Block 52 (John Smith 17772) shown up in the lobby so you can access the image you wanted.
On an actual physical level, the Chip/Page/Block are sets of wires that are driven high/low so in the end the only transistors connected to the output buffer when you say *Read* are the ones that have the data you want.
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