The battle between Hard Drives, Solid State Drives and Hybrid Drives begins.
In times past, choosing the best PC storage option required merely selecting the highest-capacity hard drive one could afford. If only life were still so simple! The fairly recent rise of solid-state drives and hybrid drives (which mix standard hard drives with solid-state memory) have significantly altered the storage landscape, creating a cornucopia of confusing options for the everyday consumer.
Yes, selecting the best drive type for a particular need can be befuddling, but fear not: This post is here to help.
Yes, selecting the best drive type for a particular need can be befuddling, but fear not: This post is here to help.
Hard Disk Drives
Hard disk drives (HDD) are the traditional storage medium for all desktop and laptop computers. Modern HDDs are far more advanced and have higher performance rates than their counterparts from years ago. However, the design is still the same. They consist of quickly rotating magnetic platters paired with read/write heads that travel over the platters’ surfaces to retrieve or record data. Think of it as a high-tech record player.
Hard disk drives (HDD) are the traditional storage medium for all desktop and laptop computers. Modern HDDs are far more advanced and have higher performance rates than their counterparts from years ago. However, the design is still the same. They consist of quickly rotating magnetic platters paired with read/write heads that travel over the platters’ surfaces to retrieve or record data. Think of it as a high-tech record player.
Hard-drive technology is relatively ancient (in terms of computer history, anyway). There are well-known pictures of the infamous IBM 350 RAMAC hard drive from 1956 that used fifty 24-inch-wide platters to hold a whopping 3.75MB of storage space. The IBM 350 was only utilized by government and industrial users, and was obsolete by 1969.
Isn't progress amazing? The PC hard drive form factor standardized in the early 1980s, with the desktop-class 5.25-inch form factor, and with the 3.5-inch desktop-class and 2.5-inch notebook-class drives coming soon thereafter.
Today's 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives use SATA interfaces almost exclusively (at least on most PCs). Capacities have grown from multiple megabytes to multiple terabytes, an increase of millions fold. Current 3.5-inch HDDs max out at 10TB, with 2.5-inch drives at 3TB max.
Hard-disk drives don’t perform nearly as well as solid-state drives or even hybrid products do in most situations, however. Today’s fastest hard drives can read and write data at more than 200MB per second with sub-8ms access times, but those numbers are significantly worse than the speeds of even some of the most affordable solid-state drives (which I'll cover in a bit). The faster the platter rotation speed, the faster the hard drive. For example, a 7200-rpm drive outperforms a 5400-rpm drive.
Isn't progress amazing? The PC hard drive form factor standardized in the early 1980s, with the desktop-class 5.25-inch form factor, and with the 3.5-inch desktop-class and 2.5-inch notebook-class drives coming soon thereafter.
Today's 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives use SATA interfaces almost exclusively (at least on most PCs). Capacities have grown from multiple megabytes to multiple terabytes, an increase of millions fold. Current 3.5-inch HDDs max out at 10TB, with 2.5-inch drives at 3TB max.
Hard-disk drives don’t perform nearly as well as solid-state drives or even hybrid products do in most situations, however. Today’s fastest hard drives can read and write data at more than 200MB per second with sub-8ms access times, but those numbers are significantly worse than the speeds of even some of the most affordable solid-state drives (which I'll cover in a bit). The faster the platter rotation speed, the faster the hard drive. For example, a 7200-rpm drive outperforms a 5400-rpm drive.
Solid-State Drives
The Solid-State Drive (SSD) has a much more recent history. The first primary drives that we know as SSDs started during the rise of netbooks in the late 2000s.
On many levels, solid-state drives are similar to hard drives. They usually connect to a system by way of the SATA interface (though PCI Express-based drives are also available for ultrahigh-performance applications), and they store files just as any other drive does. SSDs use nonvolatile NAND flash memory, so no mechanical parts or magnetic bits are involved.
Because of this, solid-state drives deliver much better performance. They're the fastest storage option available and not only can SSDs read and write data much faster than hard drives with most workloads, but they can also access the data much more quickly as well. In a nutshell, SSDs make for a much snappier, much more responsive system, with lightning-fast boot times, application launch times, and file-transfer speeds.
Another huge SSD advantage is durability. Because they have no moving parts, solid-state drives aren’t susceptible to damage or degraded performance from vibrations or movement. Drop a system or laptop containing a traditional hard-disk drive, and you have a very real chance of corrupting your data. But a solid-state drive won’t--can't—skip a beat.
Solid-state drives aren't without disadvantages, though. For one, SSDs are much more expensive than hard drives in terms of cost per gigabyte. Good, consumer-class solid-state drives run about $0.70 to $1.00 (in terms of US$) per gigabyte, whereas hard drives cost only a few cents per gigabyte. Solid-state drives don’t offer anything near the capacity of hard drives, either: The most popular SSDs have capacities of about 120GB to 256GB, with 512GB to 1TB models reserved only for those with ENORMOUS budgets.
Another downside is when SSDs fail, they tend to do so without warning. Hard drives, however, will usually start to show signs of failure by throwing a S.M.A.R.T. error or suffering from a few bad blocks. SSDs simply die without waving many—if any—red flags.
The Solid-State Drive (SSD) has a much more recent history. The first primary drives that we know as SSDs started during the rise of netbooks in the late 2000s.
On many levels, solid-state drives are similar to hard drives. They usually connect to a system by way of the SATA interface (though PCI Express-based drives are also available for ultrahigh-performance applications), and they store files just as any other drive does. SSDs use nonvolatile NAND flash memory, so no mechanical parts or magnetic bits are involved.
Because of this, solid-state drives deliver much better performance. They're the fastest storage option available and not only can SSDs read and write data much faster than hard drives with most workloads, but they can also access the data much more quickly as well. In a nutshell, SSDs make for a much snappier, much more responsive system, with lightning-fast boot times, application launch times, and file-transfer speeds.
Another huge SSD advantage is durability. Because they have no moving parts, solid-state drives aren’t susceptible to damage or degraded performance from vibrations or movement. Drop a system or laptop containing a traditional hard-disk drive, and you have a very real chance of corrupting your data. But a solid-state drive won’t--can't—skip a beat.
Solid-state drives aren't without disadvantages, though. For one, SSDs are much more expensive than hard drives in terms of cost per gigabyte. Good, consumer-class solid-state drives run about $0.70 to $1.00 (in terms of US$) per gigabyte, whereas hard drives cost only a few cents per gigabyte. Solid-state drives don’t offer anything near the capacity of hard drives, either: The most popular SSDs have capacities of about 120GB to 256GB, with 512GB to 1TB models reserved only for those with ENORMOUS budgets.
Another downside is when SSDs fail, they tend to do so without warning. Hard drives, however, will usually start to show signs of failure by throwing a S.M.A.R.T. error or suffering from a few bad blocks. SSDs simply die without waving many—if any—red flags.
Hybrid Drives
Hybrid hard drives promise some of the performance of a solid-state drive with the capacity of a hard disk drive drive. They’re bigger than an SSD and faster than a plain-old HDD.
These are sometimes called Solid-State Hybrid Drives (SSHD). By placing traditional rotating platters and a small amount of high-speed flash memory on a single drive, it automatically caches data in the solid-state storage for you, offering faster speeds for the files you use most.
Some of the advantages of hybrid storage products include cost, capacity, and manageability. Because only a relatively small solid-state volume is required to achieve significant performance gains, a large investment in a high-capacity SSD isn’t necessary. Hybrid drives tend to cost slightly more than traditional hard drives, but far less than solid-state drives. The cache volume is essentially hidden from the operating system, users aren’t required to cherry-pick the data to store on the SSD to prevent it from filling up. The hybrid storage volume can be as big as the hard drive being used, and can serve as a standard hard drive. Boot times also see some improvement.
Where hybrid products falter is with new data. When writing new data or accessing infrequently used bits, hybrid products perform just like a standard hard drive, and new hybrid drives have a "break-in period" while the software learns which data to cache. Due to the fact that hybrid products rely on caching software, they can also be somewhat more difficult to configure.
Hybrid hard drives promise some of the performance of a solid-state drive with the capacity of a hard disk drive drive. They’re bigger than an SSD and faster than a plain-old HDD.
These are sometimes called Solid-State Hybrid Drives (SSHD). By placing traditional rotating platters and a small amount of high-speed flash memory on a single drive, it automatically caches data in the solid-state storage for you, offering faster speeds for the files you use most.
Some of the advantages of hybrid storage products include cost, capacity, and manageability. Because only a relatively small solid-state volume is required to achieve significant performance gains, a large investment in a high-capacity SSD isn’t necessary. Hybrid drives tend to cost slightly more than traditional hard drives, but far less than solid-state drives. The cache volume is essentially hidden from the operating system, users aren’t required to cherry-pick the data to store on the SSD to prevent it from filling up. The hybrid storage volume can be as big as the hard drive being used, and can serve as a standard hard drive. Boot times also see some improvement.
Where hybrid products falter is with new data. When writing new data or accessing infrequently used bits, hybrid products perform just like a standard hard drive, and new hybrid drives have a "break-in period" while the software learns which data to cache. Due to the fact that hybrid products rely on caching software, they can also be somewhat more difficult to configure.
The Choice?
All depends on your personal views and the type of work you do on your PC. But here are a few helpful hints depending on personal use.
For more information see these articles from Newegg.com and the Windows Club.
- Hard-disk drives are best suited to users who need vast amounts of storage and aren't as concerned about achieving peak system performance. If you're an everyday PC user who sticks mostly to email, Web browsing, and basic document editing, a standard hard drive should suit you fine.
- Solid-state drives are best suited to savvy PC users who seek high performance. If you don’t mind managing multiple volumes and you have the budget, pairing a fast SSD with a high-capacity hard drive will result in the best of both worlds. The SSD can hold the operating system and your most frequently used applications, while the hard drive can handle the bulk-storage duties.
- For users who don’t want the responsibility of managing multiple volumes or who don’t constantly work with new data, a hybrid drive can be a great option to improve system performance—all without having to give up any capacity or having to deal with the headaches of using separate solid-state and hard-disk drives.
For more information see these articles from Newegg.com and the Windows Club.