As the title would’ve probably confirmed it to you by now, this article is about How to Choose Between SSD vs HDD Storage for Your Laptop. Now I’ve been with computers for a long (almost whole of my life) time, so heed my advice when I scribble it down, you won’t regret it.
As always, I’ll start from the very basics.
What are SSD and HDD Storage?
Before getting into all the details and differences, you need to understand what those three letters basically stand for, right?
So well let me start with what is an SSD?
SSD is the abbreviation for Solid Storage Drive (or Solid Storage Hard Drive commonly), I’ll get into a detailed comparison and details later, but for now just get it that it’s similar to a Pendrive or a memory card, just with more space. (That’s probably the simplest explanation to what an SSD is!)
While on the other hand, HDD stands for Hard disk drives. It’s more complicated, uses a robotic mechanism and is a tech that was founded in 1956! That puts it at the age of 60 years!
The HDD’s are the Hard Disk Drives that most of us have in our computers and laptops pre-installed!
So that’s the basic definition of what an SSD or an HDD is, right?
How to Choose Between SSD vs HDD Storage for Your Laptop?
So okay let’s get down to the primary topic!
Before finalizing if you should go with a laptop with SSD or the other way around, you need to know what are the basic differences, features, and requirements, right?
There’s no straight forward answer to the question, there’s only YOUR “preferences”, YOUR “budget” and YOUR “needs”, so what I’ll do it, I’ll just compare them in the next section for you, and then you can decide which one would suit you better.
Comparison Between SSD Hard Drive & HDD Drives:-
1. Data Reading & Interpretation:-
As I’ve already said, SSD drives are the “more spacious” versions of USB sticks. They aren’t “mechanical”, so as to say that they do not have any moving parts in them. They’re static.
Additionally, the SSD drives use micro-chips to record data. It has in-built and embedded “controllers” in it. That’s how it reads, moves, and interprets data.
Now the speed of the Hard drive depends on this controller.
While on the other hand, the HDD’s have an actually moving robotic arm, and that’s their data reading and interpretation superpower.
What does this mean for you:-
Let me just sum up the above data into plain English for you.
The SSD is much faster. It’s as simple as that.
Why? Imagine this, manually & physically walking and cleaning the whole house with your hands (broom/ vacuum cleaner!) That’s how HDD’s work.
While in the case of SSD’s, what is happening is you’re somehow controlling the broom/vacuum cleaner with your mind to sweep your house. Which one would be faster? The SSD version, right?
Another explanation is, the SSD uses a computer algorithm to read/copy/interpret data, while the same task is done by the physical movement of the robotic arm in the case of HDD’s and hence they’re slower.
2. Speed:-
The SSD’s have a much faster speed (200mbps- 500mbps) while the HDDs have a speed or around 50-150mbps Maximum.
3. Storage Space:-
This is one aspect where the HDDs beat the SSDs.
You won’t get SSD’s more than 1TB generally, and if you have a really good budget, you can max get a 4TB!
While on the other hand, even the cheapest laptops these days come with HDDs with 500GBs and go up to 10TBs.
4. Vibrations:-
As some of you might have noticed with your laptops the HDDs do make a sound when they get heated up due to the spinning splatters.
While there are absolutely no vibrations with the SSDs as there are no moving parts at all.
5. Time Taken to Open Files:-
Again going with the same logic, the SSDs use a computer algorithm to achieve that, while the HDDs use physical labor.
So the time taken to open files is 30% faster on SSDs compared to HDDs.
6. External Effects:-
Magnetism has a negative effect on HDDs and might result in a complete hard drive wipe-out!
While the SSDs are safe from any such external issues.
7. Power & Battery:-
Of course, this comes into play, the SSDs draw negligible power, that amounts to around a maximum of 2–3 watts!
While the HDDs draw around double that amount, that’s around 7 watts.
I don’t think I need to write it down, but of course, SSDs would consume less laptop battery compared to HDDs.
8. System Boot Time:-
The HDDs take around 30seconds to BootUp a normal operating system like Windows7 as almost all of us have experienced.
While the SSDs boot up considerably faster, that’s around 10seconds!
9. Price!
The reason I’ve enlarged the font size is that this is one of the most important factors, isn’t it? And also because both types have some considerable difference in this aspect.
So here’s the thing, SSDs cost around Rs 1000/Gb! While HDDs cost just around 250 Rs per GB! So HDDs are five times cheaper compared to SSDs!
Final Verdict:-
So, which one should you finally go with?
As you might have concluded by now, the SSDs are more advanced, better and feature-rich! Yes granted. But they offer you very limited space compared to HDDs. While on the other hand HDDs are more affordable despite not being as good as SSDs performance-wise.
So, my verdict? If you need an ultra feature-rich system, and you’re good with the budget, and you don’t need lots of space, you can totally go with the SSDs.
But if you’re just an average user, with the normal needs, and you can tolerate a bit of “less advanced” performance, you should be going with the HDDs.
Although there are other options like the Hybrid Hard Drive which combine both the features of SSDs + HDDs and aren’t as expensive, that’s another option for you.
Conclusion:-
So that was all I had on How to Choose Between SSD vs HDD Storage for Your Laptop! I’m sure the piece should’ve helped you.
If it did, I’d love it if you hit the share buttons. Also if there’s any doubt you’ve still got crawling around your brains, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.
