SSD vs. HDD

Solid state drives against hard disk drives: Which is right for you?

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Shyam Cortex

4 min readJul 10, 2018

Most people now buy laptops or plan to expand their existing memory for their computing needs and have to make the decision between getting either a Solid State Drive (SSD) or Hard Disk Drive (HDD) as the storage component. So which of the two is the better choice, an SSD or HDD?

Everyone has different needs and you have to evaluate the decision based on those needs, your preferences, and of course budget.

If performance and fast bootup is your primary consideration and money is secondary, then SSD is the way to go.
If storage capacity and money is your primary consideration, performance and fast bootup are secondary then HDD is the way to go.

I”ll keep this article on a level that anyone can understand. So, stick with this article and in the end, you will know almost everything about SSD & HDD.

What is an HDD?

HDDs was initially introduced by IBM almost 60 years ago.

It makes use of magnetism for the purpose of storing data. A hard disk drive uses a mechanical arm with a read/write head to move around and read information from the right location on a storage platter.

The performance of an HDD is dependent on the spinning speed of its platter (the circular disk on which magnetic data is stored).
The usual spinning range of HDD drives in use today is 5400 RPM to up to 7200 RPM.
Server-based platters can reach spinning speeds of up to 15000 RPM.

The thing that makes HDDs most suitable for data storage is that they are extremely cheap. They can store copious amounts of data and won’t cost you much either.

What is an SSD?

You might be shopping for a computer and simply wondering what the heck SSD actually means? To begin, SSD stands for Solid State Drive.

You’re probably familiar with USB memory sticks — SSD can be thought of as an oversized and more sophisticated version of the humble USB memory stick.
Like a memory stick, there are no moving parts to an SSD. Rather, information is stored in microchips. This difference is what makes SSD so much faster.
As an analogy, what’s quicker? Having to walk across the room to retrieve your favorite book or simply having kindle with all the books you have in your room and magically having that book open in front of you when you need it? That’s how an HDD compares to an SSD, it simply requires more physical labor (mechanical movement) to get information.
Because SSD doesn’t have any moving parts, it can endure impact or vibration that is fatal to HDD.

An SSD is much more faster than a HDD. This is because SSD’s do not have moving parts, and store data in microchips. Hard disks, on the other hand, contains moving parts to read and write data onto your hard disk. This means that an SSD is faster, lighter, and less bulky.

Hybrid Drives

If you’re interested in the technology of an SSD, but find the current state of available drives to be too expensive, there’s hope: Hybrid drives. These drives combine an HDD and SSD into one device.

First, there are the SSHDs — or solid-state hybrid drives. These drives are full-sized HDDs (often around 1 or 2 TBs) that come equipped with an extra cache of SSD NAND memory (usually a few GBs worth).

Which is right for you?

An HDD might be the right choice if:

You need lots of storage capacity, up to 10TB
Don’t want to spend much money
Don’t care too much about how fast computer boots up or opens programs — then get a hard drive (HDD).

2. An SSD might be the right choice if:

You are willing to pay for faster performance
Don’t mind limited storage capacity or can work around that (though consumer SSD now go up to 4TB and enterprise run as high as 60TB)

You would get 1TB internal SSD for about 23,000 INR and 1TB internal HDD for 3000 INR.

And luckily we would get a 1TB internal Hybrid Drive for 16,000 INR