People now buy laptops for their computing needs and sometimes is hard to make the decision between getting either a Solid State Drive (SSD) or Hard Disk Drive (HDD) There’s no a simple answer to this question; each buyer has different needs, preferences, and of course budget. Even though the price of SSDs has been falling, the price still high compared with HDDs. Yet, if performance and fast bootup is your primary consideration and money is secondary, then SSD is the way to go. We will make a comparison of SSD and HDD storage and go over the good, the bad on both

SSD vs HDD Comparison

Power Draw / Battery Life

SSD Less power draw, averages 2 – 3 watts, resulting in 30+ minute battery boost

HDD More power draw, averages 6 – 7 watts and therefore uses more battery

Cost

SSD Expensive, From $50 to $80 for 240GB (Depending on brand and where you buy it)

HDD From $50 to $80 for 1TB, very cheap (Depending on brand and where you buy it)

Capacity

SSD Right now the largest SSD that you'll find has 4TB of storage.

HDD Typically around 500GB and 2TB maximum for notebook size drives; 6TB max for desktops

Operating System Boot Time

SSD Around 10-13 seconds average bootup time

HDD Around 30-40 seconds average bootup time

Noise

SSD There are no moving parts and as such no sound

HDD Audible clicks and spinning can be heard

Vibration

SSD No vibration as there are no moving parts

HDD The spinning of the platters can sometimes result in vibration

Heat Produced

SSD Lower power draw and no moving parts so little heat is produced

HDD HDD doesn’t produce much heat, but it will have a measurable amount more heat than an SSD due to moving parts and higher power draw

Failure Rate

SSD Mean time between failure rate of 2.0 million hours

HDD Mean time between failure rate of 1.5 million hours

File Copy / Write Speed

SSD Generally above 200 MB/s and up to 550 MB/s for cutting edge drives

HDD The range can be anywhere from 50 – 120MB / s

Encryption

SDD Full Disk Encryption (FDE)Supported on some models

HDD Full Disk Encryption (FDE) Supported on some models

File Opening Speed

SDD Up to 30% faster than HDD

HDD Slower than SSD

Magnetism Affected?

SSD An SSD is safe from any effects of magnetism

HDD Magnets can erase data

To help you even more, here are some rules to follow when you decide which drive is best for you:

An HDD might be the right choice if:

• You need lots of storage capacity, up to 6TB (though with SMR technology new drives can have up to 10TB)

• Don’t want to spend much money

• Don’t care too much about how fast a computer boots up or opens programs - then get a hard drive (HDD).

An SSD might be best for you if:

• You are willing to pay for faster performance ( big difference when using photoshop and other programs that read big files from disk )

• Don’t mind limited storage capacity or can work around that ( SSDs are working on this Intel will have SSD of UP to 13GB )

How much of a performance difference do they really make for gaming?

Upgrading to an SSD will not make a difference. The point of installing games on an SSD is the drastic reduction in load times, which occurs because the data transfer speed of SSDs (over 400 MB/s) is significantly higher than that of HDDs, which generally deliver under 170 MB/s.

But then again who wants to wait for the game to load when an SSD can minimize the waiting to half the time on some cases. Now If you're having framerate issues, a solid state drive isn't what you need. Your GPU is is the key component there.

In Conclusion

HDDs are still the popular choice for the majority of average consumers, usually choosing the HDD as the storage option in their new computer simply due to the much cheaper cost. However, more and more consumers desire top computing performance and are looking for an SSD inside their new setup or as an upgrade to their current one. As such, SSDs are well on their way to becoming the mainstream, standard storage mechanism, especially for laptops given the advantages they present for a mobile device (they are currently the default storage device in the Ultrabook category). That said, there will always be a market for both HDDs and SSDs. The advent of mSATA SSD devices and hybrid drives that include both SSD + HDD features is another option for consumers seeking a bit of the best of both

If you need help installing and SSD or HDD or upgrading from HDD to SSD let OTech Know we're here to help give us a call at 720-364-4599

Remember that when you upgrade all your files will be saved so you don't have to worry about your Pictures, Documents, Music etc.

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