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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. Check out the What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Solid-state Drives? Page at Sweetwater — the world's leading music technology and instrument retailer! Shop Sweetwater inSync SweetCare Events Careers Used Gear GearFest.

1. Solid State Drive Wiki

SSD vs HDDMost people now buy laptops 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, SSD storage or HDD storage? There’s no straight-forward answer to this question; each buyer has different needs and you have to evaluate the decision based on those needs, your preferences, and of course budget. Even though the price of SSDs has been falling, the price per gigabyte advantage is still strongly with HDDs. Yet, if performance and fast bootup is your primary consideration and money is secondary, then SSD speed is the way to go. For the remainder of this article, we will make a comparison of SSD and HDD storage and go over the good, the bad, and the ugly of both. What is SSD Storage?We’ll make no assumptions here and keep this article on a level that anyone can understand. You might be shopping for a computer or storage upgrade and simply wondering what the heck SSD actually means? To begin, SSD stands for Solid State Drive.

Solid State Drive Wiki

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 memory stick storage, there are no moving parts to an SSD.

Rather, information is stored in microchips. Conversely, 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. This difference is what makes SSD speed so much faster. As an analogy, what’s quicker? Having to walk across the room to retrieve a book to get information or simply 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.A typical SSD uses what is called NAND-based flash memory. This is a non-volatile type of memory. What does non-volatile mean you ask?

The simple answer is that you can turn off the disk and it won’t “forget” what was stored on it. This is of course an essential characteristic of any type of permanent memory.

During the early days of SSDs, rumors floated around saying stored data would wear off and be lost after only a few years. Regardless, that rumor is certainly not true with today’s technology, as you can read and write to an SSD all day long and the data storage integrity will be maintained for well over 200 years.

In other words, the data storage life of an SSD can outlive you!An SSD does not have a mechanical arm to read and write data, it instead relies on an embedded processor (or “brain”) called a controller to perform operations related to reading and writing data. The controller is a very important factor in determining the SSD read write speed.

Decisions it makes related to how to store, retrieve, cache and clean up data can determine the overall SSD speed. We won’t get into the nitty-gritty details for the various tasks it performs such as error correction, read and write caching, encryption, and garbage collection to name a few. Yet, suffice to say, good controller technology is often what separates a excellent SSD read/write speed from a lesser one.Finally, you may be wondering what an SSD looks like and how easy it is to replace a hard drive with an after-market device. If you look at the images below, you’ll see the top and undersides of a typically-sized 2.5” SSD. The technology is encased inside either a plastic or metal case and looks like nothing more than what a battery might:SSD Top SideSSD Bottom SideThe form factor of the SSD can be the same as a regular hard drive. It comes in a standard 1.8”, 2.5”, or 3.5” size that can fit into the housing and connectors for the same-sized hard drives. The connector used for these standard sizes is SATA.

There are smaller SSDs available that use what’s called mini-SATA (mSATA) and fit into the mini-PCI Express slot of a laptop. There are also newer SSDs that can take advantage of the NVMe interface to deliver the fastest possible SSD speed on the market. NVMe SSDs will be more expensive than SATA SSDs, but for the best SSD read/write speed, NVMe is the way to go.What is an HDD?Hard Disk Drives, or HDD in techno-parlance, have been around for donkey's years relative to the technology world. HDDs were first introduced by IBM in 1956 - yes folks this is nearly 60-year old technology, thank goodness vacuum tubes for TVs didn’t last so long! An HDD uses magnetism to store data on a rotating platter. A read/write head floats above the spinning platter reading and writing data.

The faster the platter spins, the faster an HDD can perform. Typical laptop drives today spin at either 5400 RPM (Revolutions per Minute) or 7200RPM, though some server-based platters spin at up to 15,000 RPM!The major advantage of an HDD is that it is capable of storing lots of data cheaply.

These days, 1 TeraByte (1,024 gigabytes) of storage is not unusual for a laptop hard drive, and the density continues to grow. However, the cost per gigabyte is hard to calculate now-a-days since there are so many classes to consider, though it is safe to say that all HDDs are substantially cheaper than SSDs. As a comparison, the popular WD Black (1TB) goes for roughly $69 on most websites while the OCZ Trion 100 (960GB) and Samsung 850 EVO (1TB) SSDs go for $199 and $319 respectively, three to five times the price of the WD Black. So if you want cheap storage and lots of it, using a standard hard drive is definitely the more appealing way to go.When it comes to appearance, HDDs essentially look the same from the outside as SSDs. HDDs predominantly use SATA interface. The most common size for laptop hard drives is the 2.5” form factor while a larger 3.5” form factor is used in desktop computers. The larger size allows for more platters inside and thus more storage capacity.

Some desktop hard drives can store up to 6TB of data! Below is an example of what an HDD looks like using the Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 4TB hard drive:HDD Top SideHDD Bottom SideSSD Vs HDD ComparisonNow it’s time to do some comparisons and determine which might be best for your individual needs - SSD or HDD?

Runs slower, less storage spaceComment:This is not true, solid state drives run significantly fasterthan hard disk drives (HDD), which are physically limited by therotational speed of the motor and the data distribution on thetracks. On HDDs outer tracks can carry more information and in oneturn much information can be retrieved, if its written in sequence.If written in random order (as with most files) more spins have tobe made in order to retrieve data and when the HDD gets filled upand writes are done on internal tracks, the data retrival speedsfurther decline.With SSDs its a whole different scenario. There is no spinningplatter, only the controller who allocates data. Since there is norotational components, limiting the data retrival speed, SSDs do amuch better job in write and reading data than HDDs.To give you a few examples:A 15K RPM SSD generally provides:200.0 MB/s read & write for sequential data blocks1.2 MB/s for random 4k block read & writeA OWC Mercury Pro SSD generally provides:285 MB/s read & write for sequential data blocks (limited bythe 300 MB/s max.

Datatroughput of the SATA II interface)50 MB/s for random 4k block read & writeA good source explaining the details about it can be found onWikipedia or SSDeurope.