SSD vs. HDD: What’s the difference?

With the ever changing technology trends, we see new choices coming up to replace the traditional options that were available to us. Slowly, but surely we are finding better solutions to cater our problems. Now, coming to the storage options available, with the availability of SSD, there have been more devices to follow with an SSD approach along with the HDD to boot.  Many Laptops currently provide a SSD along with an HDD drive.

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What is a SSD?

SSD stands for Solid State Drive. As the name indicates, it is quite the upgrade from the HDD. These are some of the numerous advantages SSDs provide:

SSDs are Faster

Time factor is possibly the most important factor to take into consideration these days. This is where the SSDs outshine the traditional Hard disk drives. SSDs offer faster and instantaneous data access, stunningly fast boot-ups, faster file transfer and in general, 50x better performance than their counterparts, which can only access data that are located close to its heads.

SSDs are more durable

As there are no moving components involved within the SSDs, they are better susceptible to shock damage and irregular power downs. HDD stores data in a   magnetic coating and the read/write head accesses the data through constantly moving the heads. As such, there are high chances for data losses in HDD under power failure and shock damage, whereas SSDs are mostly prone from it due to their non-volatile memory.

SSDs consume less power and heat

Because of no platters being involved in the SSDs, they use less power because no rotation is involved and at the same time, generate less heat and noise. HDDs on the other hand, use rotating platters to find the location of the data and there is more heat and noise generated simultaneously, with the need for more power.

SSDs do not require timely Disk Defragmentation

Data stored on HDDs due to lack of space are often divided into bits and stored at different locations within the drive which makes accessing the data time consuming and needs to be periodically defragmented. SSDs use NAND based flash memory that needs no defragmentation.

SSDs are lighter and smaller

Everyone these days, prefer light. Nowadays, Ultrabook(s) have become quite popular which use SSDs and have significantly faster performance than any other PCs. Significantly lesser components used in the SSDs make them smaller and lighter in comparison to HDDs.

Thus, it is quite clear that SSDs provide a complete edge over the HDDs. If you need a hard-drive that should be fast, reliable and at the same time does not drain your battery much and most of all, durable then SSD is the right choice to go.

At the same time, SSDs are presently costlier than the HDDs. A 2 TB HDD actually costs much less than a 500GB SSD. Sure, the prices are coming down, but it may take a little while before we see cheaper SSDs in the market. With the current pricing, many consumers will find going with a SSD laptop not too “budget-friendly”.  But for consumers valuing performance over price, nothing beats the SSD, which are well becoming the standard storage mechanisms in PCs especially laptops.

Miguel

I started this tech blog back in 2011 as a place to write down processes I took to fix my client systems and network. Now I write some tips and tricks to help others with the tech issues that one might encounter.

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