LaptopAdvisor

Alright, so there are a lot of people who are wondering what exactly Solid State Drives (SSD) are, and how they differ from Hard Disk Drives (HDD). Hopefully this article will clear up some questions. If you’re thinking about buying an SSD, or rather upgrading to one, you may find some useful information here. Also, if you’re looking to make your own SSD check out our other article on that.

The Problem with HDDs

A normal HDD has a platter inside of it which is constantly spinning and creating a significant amount of heat, and as you can imagine, takes a significant amount of power. In addition to that, hard drives have these tiny platters spinning at 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM. Now, imaging dropping something that is spinning that fast – yeah, not a pretty sight, chances are it’s going to break or at least crash, making you lose most, if not all, of your data. Some hard drives have a falling mechanism, which tries to sense when they are falling and automatically shut off, but this is hardly a fail safe.

The Solution

Now, SSDs, on the other hand, instead of using a spinning platter, use flash memory. You’ve probably heard of it in the small thumb drives. Same concept in both: there are no moving parts. This means no heat, less power used, no chance of dropping it and having a plate shatter, etc. It also means a less likely chance to crash, in fact there is almost a 0% chance of crashing. In addition to that, SSDs are between 10 and 1000 times faster than HDDs, depending on the tasks performed. SSDs are sounding pretty good now, aren’t they?

The Downfall

There’s only one real downfall. SSDs cost a lot. And by a lot, I mean between hundreds and, and even up to thousands, of dollars more than their HDD counterparts. That’s pretty much the only downfall. Right now the technology just isn’t at the point where the SSDs can be made for a reasonable price. Now, if you’re one of those people that always have the top of the line toys, or if you just have the money, then by all means purchase one. But, for the majority of people, I’d hold off on the SSDs until the technology becomes cheaper.

So there’s the low down on SSDs and HDDs. Hopefully this makes your decision easier, or at least more informed. In some time we hope to get more in depth testing on SSDs, just to find out to what extent they are better than HDDs, but more than that later. And, more importantly, check out our article on how to make your own SSD for much, much cheaper than you can buy from the laptop companies.

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