system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:  How do solid state drives work?

I read up on wikipedia and from what I understood there:  It's magic.
gpt
SSDs use multiple "flash" memory chips to store data instead of a rotating disc with a magnetic coating like hard disc drives. These are the same kind of chips that are used in a USB thumb drive.  
  
The SSD also contains a controller chip to connect to the bus (like eSATA) going to/from the PC.  A disc drive organizes the data into tracks (circles) and sectors (shaped like pie slices) on the disc, but an SSD doesn't really have those things. So the controller chip translates between what the PC's operating system may expect, thinking it is talking to a hard disc drive, into the memory organization that is actually there in the SSD.  The controller chip also does some other functions to help maximize reliability and throughput on the SSD.  
  
The big advantage of an SSD is speed. Writes are a bit slower than reads, but both are much faster than on a hard disc. On a hard disc, the read/write head may have to wait 10's or even 100's of milliseconds for the data track/sector it wants, since the head has to move in and out and wait for the proper sector to spin around to it. Since SSDs use integrated circuits, their access times are on the order of 1000 times faster.   
  
An SSD should also be more resistant to mechanical shocks, since there is nothing moving inside at all. Of course, they aren't indestructible.  
  
One thing to know about SSDs that isn't obvious: They slow down as they fill up. Data can be written to an empty SSD faster than one that is nearly full, because the controller chip has to do a lot of "housekeeping" when the memory is getting full. So when you get one, it may seem much faster at first. This is normal.