Which is better: hdd or ssd for laptop: tips for choosing

If earlier laptop drives were actually chosen only by the criterion of their capacity and by the level of popularity of the manufacturer, today before owners of PCs and laptops often when updating the hardware or when buying a new device, the question arises as to what to prefer: HDD or same SSD. This article is intended to provide an answer to this difficult question, to reveal the features of both types of drives and help the user decide on the final choice.

What are hdd and ssd?

To begin with, it is worthwhile to figure out what each individual type of drive is like.

HDD is a traditional and, according to many, somewhat outdated type of hard drive. In the mechanical design of the device operates a magnetic head that reads and writes information to a magnetic disk. Most often there are several disks, and the total volume of the device directly depends on their number.

SSD is a more innovative type of solid state drive, recently gaining more and more popularity. There is no magnetic head inside such a disk, but its “filling” consists mainly of controllers and microcircuits. In simple terms, an SSD is a "flash drive" with a huge amount of memory and increased speed.

What is the difference between hdd and ssd?

In order to identify other features of these two types of drives, in addition to those already voiced, it is worth comparing their advantages and disadvantages. So, HDD, according to experts, has the following advantages:

• Large enough possible memory
• Attractive price

The disadvantages of the HDD are now more than the advantages. Among them:

• Greater (compared to SSD) power consumption
• Low "performance" (in most modern laptops and PCs, it is the HDDs that are the most technically weak link)
• Heating during operation
• Mechanical damage vulnerability

Reference! HDDs are especially afraid of shock during operation. Having received such damage, the disk can instantly fail, so laptop owners should be especially careful with them.

As for the SSD, it is customary to distinguish among their positive qualities:

• High speed of data writing and reading (on average no less than 4 times in comparison with HDDs)
• High reliability
• Lack of extraneous noise in work, vibrations, etc.
• No cooling required due to low heating even under heavy load
• Low power consumption, positively affecting the battery life of the laptop.
• Light weight

Reference! Such SSDs are more resistant to falls, however, even they can be damaged by a strong impact.

For all its advantages, however, SSDs also have a number of disadvantages, including:

• High price (the price tag grows even more with the growth of the volume of stored information)
• Not too long service life if the basic rules of operation are not observed
• The complexity of data recovery when a disk is damaged or crashes

What to choose?

In addition to the volume and the final price tag, there are a number of other (equally important) criteria for choosing the type of media for the laptop. First of all, attention should be paid to the data transfer interface (on modern models it is most often SATA, on older models - IDE). The SATA interface itself is already on the market in several "generations", for example, version 3.0, released back in 2009, has a data transfer rate of up to 6 gigabytes per second.

If the laptop has non-standard sizes, then the size of the “slot” for the hard drive in it may be different. For example, the standard form factor for most laptops is 2.5 inches, and for PCs it is 3.5 inches. In addition to differences in width, differences in thickness (height) of the device may also be present. Currently, the most common models are 7 and 9 mm thick.

It is worth remembering that the amount of memory is an important, but not fundamental parameter, and you definitely should not rely solely on choosing a drive. If we are talking about HDD, then the spindle speed parameter is important. Relatively speaking, the higher this speed, the more “nimble” the device itself will be, since the hard drive, as mentioned above, is one of the most “sagging” speed parts of computer equipment.

Reference! When purchasing a device with a high head rotation speed, the user should not forget that an increased rotation speed means more heat devices, and it may need additional cooling, otherwise constant overheating can significantly reduce the life of not only the hard drive, but also adjacent with it knots.

Another important parameter when choosing is the cache size. In this case, everything is quite simple: the larger the cache, the better. This type of memory is used to capture information from magnetic heads and transfer it to the motherboard.

If we talk about a significant increase in the power characteristics of the laptop, then the best option would be to buy an SSD-carrier. A large number of users, in addition, use SSDs as an additional device, embedding it using special parts instead of CD-rom. This allows, with proper installation and correct operation, not only to increase the laptop’s memory, but also to increase its performance.