ssd vs hdd

ssd vs hdd : What’s the difference? A hard disk drive (HDD) is an old-school storage device that uses mechanical platters and a moving read/write head to access data. A solid-state drive (SSD) is a newer, faster type of device that stores data on instantly-accessible memory chips.

ssd vs hdd : In the example above, the laptop on the left comes with a traditional hard disk drive (HDD), while the one on the right contains a more modern solid-state drive (SSD). Fundamentally, their purpose is the same: These storage devices preserve your memories, music, documents, and programs. But the technology behind them couldn’t be more different:

• HDDs: An enclosure contains a series of platters covered by a ferromagnetic coating. The direction of the magnetization represents the individual bits. Data is read and written by a head (similar to the way vinyl record albums work) that moves extremely fast from one area of the disk to another. Since all of these pieces are “mechanical,” the hard disk is the slowest component of any computer — and the most fragile.
• SSD: These newer types of disks store information on flash memory, which consists of individual memory cells storing bits that are instantly accessible by the controller. Learn all about SSDs here.

Why are SSDs useful for laptops?

While lower-priced laptops still come with traditional hard drives (it’s one way for manufacturers to minimize their costs), most midrange to high-end machines come with an SSD.

Due to their non-mechanical nature, SSDs require less power, which translates into better battery life.

They’re also shock-resistant. Hard disks have moving parts. If you drop your laptop, chances are that the read/write head of an old-school hard drive is in motion, which could lead to data failure. This doesn’t apply to SSDs.

It isn’t always an either/or choice. In some cases, you find “hybrid” computers. The system partition that contains the operating system, application programs, and the most-used files are installed on an SSD. Other data, such as movies, photos, and documents, are stored on a traditional HDD, which is larger and less expensive.

How much faster are solid-state drives compared to hard disk drives?

ssd vs hdd speed : The speed difference is significant. SSDs are extremely fast in all areas, but the speed difference is more pronounced when performing certain tasks, such as:

• Sequential read/write operations: Copying and moving huge files (such as movies) is where the difference is most apparent. On old-school HDDs, the copying process takes 30–150 MB per second (MB/s), where the same action takes about 500 MB/s on normal SSD, or even 3,000–3,500 MB/s on new NVME SSDs. In this example, copying a 20 GB movie is complete in less than 10 seconds with an SSD, while a hard disk would need at least two minutes.
• Small “4K” read/write operations: Most of the time, when you run Windows (or MacOS), open programs, or browse the web, you’re actually opening and manipulating thousands of smaller files, which are stored in small blocks of data (usually sized at 4K). The faster your disk can read (and write) these 4K blocks, the faster and snappier your system seems. With HDDs, the speed ranges from 0.1 to 1.7 megabytes per second (MB/s). SSDs and NVME SSDs, however, operate at much faster speeds of 50–250 MB/s in 4K reads/writes.

How does this compare to HDDs? Well, every 10 years or so some of our engineers have been successfully booting up and reading data from HDD systems that are well over 30 years old — error free!

Storage Conditions — SSD vs HDD

Can factors such as temperature and humidity affect the retention lifetime of stored data on HDD and SSD? In short — yes — no storage media will last forever. High humidity for example can be a significant problem for both SSD and HDD as it can lead to the oxidization and corrosion of metals. However high storage temperatures have a significant effect on SSD data retention; the rate of data degradation in NAND flash memory accelerates considerably with increased temperature.

For the average use of a laptop or mobile device, this area probably isn’t going to be an issue, but when you start looking at servers and data centres’ media storage conditions, it is a required to protect against drive failure (and potentially data loss) as a result of overheating or high humidity.

Should I Worry?

The reality is for normal day-to-day usage in a laptop or PC, for example, you needn’t lose sleep over the life expectancy of your storage media. Aside from an incredibly small proportion of manufacturer defects, your HDD or SSD shouldn’t give up on you easily if you’re taking care of it and keeping it away from physical hazards. If you’d like to investigate more there are many different ways to monitor the logical health of your devices; there’s ‘SMART’ tools to predict drive failures and software to check the wear and tear of SSDs in detail, including how much usable life it has left.

With mobile devices, there is obviously a higher risk of physical damage (dropping a phone on the floor, iPads taking a bath, etc.), but with normal everyday usage you would be highly unlikely to encounter issues in the longevity of the storage media itself. If you’re looking to store data longer-term then it might be best to go HDD over SSD, or better yet — look into the wonderful world of magnetic tape storage (yes, they still exist!).

If you are looking for further guidance on which storage type is best for your business, it’s worth also checking out this article, which talks about HDD, SSD and the more recent ‘hybrid’ drive.

Originally published at https://shanetechblogs.blogspot.com on August 15, 2020.