HDD vs. SSD
With cloud storage options abound for both the individual and the organization there’s little reason that your next PC shouldn’t have an SSD.
HDD vs. SSD, there’s a clear winner here and while pricing has been prohibitive, we’re nearing a point where the performance boost provided by SSD’s outweighs the cons associated with cost per gigabyte. With cloud storage options abound for both the individual and the organization there’s little reason that your next PC shouldn’t have an SSD.
HDDs were introduced in 1956 by IBM and use magnetism to store data on a rotating “disk” called a platter. A read/write head floats over the spinning platter to read and write data to the “disk”. The faster the “disk” spins, the faster the HDD performs. Typical HDDs spin at 5400 RPM (revolutions per minute) or 7200 RPM. You can think of them as miniature vinyl record players, except instead of playing groovy tunes they contain all the information known to man.
SSDs on the other hand were first introduced as a storage medium for commercial use in 1991 during which time a 20MB SSD sold OEM for around $1,000. SSDs can be based on non-volatile (contents persist without power) NAND flash memory, and the volatile (contents are lost without power) DRAM used predominantly in RAM today. Unlike an HDD an SSD doesn’t have any moving parts, much like USB sticks/drives.
Today, an SSD typically costs 2x as much as an HDD of the same size. So, what do you get for that huge bump in cost? Speed, operating system boot time drops to 10-15 seconds on an SSD whereas an HDD averages 30-40 seconds. File copy/write speed also sees a massive increase, generally above 200 MB/s, up to 550 MB/s on the best SSD; an HDD by comparison can copy/write at 50-120 MB/s. Silence, an HDD has moving parts, it makes the crunchy noise typically associated with a computer working its pants off, SSDs do not. SSDs use less power than HDDs and in combination with no moving parts generate less heat. SSDs are less likely to break when dropped and on average have a longer lifespan than HDDs. HDDs have a better price to capacity ratio and are capable of being larger. The largest commercial SSD is currently 4TB while the largest HDD is 10TB.
So, which do you pick? If your use case involves storing a lot of videos, photos or other large file types then you will want to purchase an HDD or use a cloud storage service like Microsoft’s OneDrive. If you want speed (why wouldn’t you?), then an SSD will be your pick. Ultimately though, you’ll want the best of both worlds and thankfully you don’t have to choose. In the event you’re uncomfortable with storing your data in the cloud or need to execute on the data being stored, you can purchase a small SSD large enough to install your operating system and programs while using a large HDD for data storage.
-Peter T. Belies