When choosing a new computer, many users are faced with an abbreviation unknown to them. This abbreviation is SSD. Some computers are equipped with an SSD, some do not, and some also have an SSD and a more conventional HDD.
This confusion makes it much more difficult to choose a computer. In this article, we will try to explain in as much detail as possible how an SSD differs from an HDD and which one is better.
Difference # 1. An SSD is a solid state drive and an HDD is a magnetic disk drive.
SSD is an abbreviation of the English phrase "solid-state drive". This phrase translates to solid state drive, and it means that this disc works exclusively on the basis of microcircuits. Actually, there are no "disks" in it. There are only chips that are used to store information, a chip controller and a board.
While HDD is an abbreviation of the English "hard (magnetic) disk drive". This phrase translates to hard disk drive. It was on the hard disk, because there used to be drives and soft disks, also known as floppy disks. In the HDD, information is recorded on a magnetic disk. At the same time, a large number of additional equipment is placed in the HDD to service this magnetic disk. This is a motor for rotating the disk, a drive for moving the read heads, and a board for controlling all this equipment.
Internal SSD and HDD
In general, SSD and HDD are drives that operate on two completely different principles and their principles and follow their other differences, which we will discuss below.
Difference # 2. SSDs are much faster than HDDs.
Due to the fact that SSD works exclusively on microcircuits, these drives are distinguished by their high operating speed. An SSD drive writes and reads data much faster. Nowadays, even the most expensive and advanced HDDs cannot provide read or write speeds of more than 150 MB / sec. While even mid-range SSDs can deliver 550MB / sec, which is over 3.5 times faster than HDDs. More expensive models of SSD drives that work through PCI Express lanes can deliver more than 1000 MB / sec, which is completely incomparable to the speeds of HDD.
Thanks to this speed of reading and writing data, the SSD drive can significantly speed up the entire computer. If an SSD is installed on a computer, then such a computer turns on faster, launches programs faster and responds faster to all other user actions.
Difference # 3. The SSD is better at withstanding shock and shock.
Everyone knows that HDD drives do not withstand shock, shock or any kind of overload. It is worth dropping on the floor and you can carry it to the trash, or to a data recovery specialist. Average statistical HDD storage can survive 70 G overload during operation and 350 G overload during storage. While for an SSD drive, even 1500 G is not a problem.
It may seem that this is not important, because you are not throwing your computer on the floor. But, if we are talking about a laptop, then such increased reliability will not be superfluous. The laptop is constantly exposed to minor shocks and in some cases this leads to breakage hard disk.
Difference # 4. An SSD uses a lot less power.
Another important difference between SSD and HDD is power consumption. An average HDD consumes about 4W during idle and 6W during active operation. While an SSD drive consumes about 0.5 - 1.3 W during idle time and about 0.5 - 3 W during active work. The difference is very significant, especially when it comes to a laptop.
Difference # 5. The SSD does not make any noise.
An SSD drive is powered entirely by chips and has no moving parts. Due to this, the SSD works absolutely silently.
Difference # 6. An SSD weighs much less than an HDD.
Heavy weight is another disadvantage of HDDs, which is especially noticeable on laptops. The weight of an average laptop hard drive is about 100 grams, while the entire SSD drive is at least 2 times smaller.
Difference # 7. HDD is more reliable.
But, HDDs also have advantages over SSDs. For example, HDDs are more reliable. It is believed that HDDs are much more reliable than SSDs. In fact, this is not the case. There is a slight advantage in reliability, but the difference is not as critical as it is sometimes said. Now on sale there are SSD drives, the manufacturer of which gives them a 10-year warranty, and this already says something. Anyway backups important data needs to be done regardless of the type of your drive.
Difference # 8. HDD is much cheaper.
Another big difference that HDD wins is price. If we compare the cost of SSD and HDD, taking into account the amount of information they store, then HDDs will always be cheaper.
When buying a new PC or updating the disk system of an old electronic computer, the question arises without fail: "Which is better - SSD or HDD?" Five years ago, this question did not arise. There was no alternative to an ordinary hard disk (its second name is "hard drive" or simply "screw"). Therefore, it was precisely such devices that were used everywhere. But now the situation has changed dramatically. Increasingly, users are paying attention to solid-state drives, which, although they are more expensive, have much higher performance.
History
Before we find out what is the difference between SSD and HDD, let's take a short historical excursion and understand the data storage technologies that are used in each type of device.
The first full-fledged hard disk drive (official name) was made by IBM in 1973. Then its volume was 60 MB (2 plates, 30 MB each). Over the past 40+ years, such devices have evolved, and their characteristics have improved significantly - both capacity and speed. But the essence of the technology has not changed. At the heart of any HDD (from the English words "hard" - hard, "disk" - disk and "drive" - in this case, a drive) is a plate covered with a ferromagnetic layer. With the help of the head, a certain orientation is created in it ("north" and "south" poles, which correspond to the logical "0" and "1"). Solid state drives were first introduced in 1978. But their widespread use began relatively recently - the first PCs equipped with them as a main drive appeared in 2009. Solid state are built on the basis of semiconductor materials, which are composed of "cells". Only two values "0" (no signal) and "1" (potential is present) can be written to such a "cell". Hence the difference between a hard drive and an SSD. The difference from HDD is that it uses a different material in production (silicon versus ferromagnet) and a completely different principle of information storage (microcircuits versus wafers). This must be remembered when choosing a new device of this class.
Classic version
In order to answer the question of which is better - SSD or HDD, we will consider each device for storing information separately. Let's start with the second one. This is a classic way of organizing a disk system. The main characteristics of hard drives are as follows:
- Capacity - the amount of stored information in decimal. At the same time, this indicator in the operating system will differ, since here the calculation is already carried out in the binary system. Now on sale are available drives with capacities from 250 GB to 8 TB.
- The connection interface can be IDE, USB and SATA. The first one is morally and physically outdated and is used only on PCs that were released 5 years ago and earlier. The second is great for portable storage of information. And the third, the main one, is now used almost everywhere. Its latest version has the index "3". All devices capable of working with this version of this interface allow data transfer at speeds up to 6 Gb / s. Also, SATA has a special version with the "m" index, which is used only on laptops and netbooks.
- As noted earlier, it depends on the type of interface being used. The higher it is, the better.
- Rotational speed of the plates. Now on sale there are models with 5400 and 7200 rpm. per minute. The higher this indicator, the higher the performance.
These are the main ones. To answer the question of which is better - SSD or HDD, you need to consider the parameters of solid state drives. Which will be done further.
Know-how
There is no other name for an SSD as know-how. These devices went on sale 5 years ago. Immediately constraining factors were their high cost and small size. But now the situation is gradually changing. Increasingly, they can be found on stationary computers and laptops. Their main characteristics are as follows:
- Capacity is the same as that of hard drives... Models from 32GB to 1TB are now available.
- Manufacturing technology can be from 19 nm to 26 nm. The smaller, the faster the performance, but at the same time, the number of cell rewriting cycles is reduced.
- Connection interface. All of them are similar to those previously shown for HDD, except for IDE, which is not used for SSD.
- The number of rewriting cycles. It can be from 1000 to 5000 cycles. The higher the value, the longer the SSD will last.
Based on the above, you can easily give an answer to how HDD differs from SSD and which one is better.
Drive Comparison
Comparing the performance of each of the drives, it can be noted that solid-state drives have more high speed data transmission. This is provided by the technology itself. Microcircuits in this regard are better than magnetic plates. This is where the advantages of this type of device end. If we compare the cost and size of the drive, it turns out that at a price of 40-50 USD, you can buy either 32 GB
SSD, or 160-250 GB HDD. Hence the choice of most users. For the same cost, more volume is better than performance. Also, the maximum capacity of a HDD is 8 times more (1 GB versus 8 GB).
What is better and where?
Now let's figure out which is better - SSD or HDD - in each case. For multimedia stations and office PCs, hard drives with a capacity of 160-320 GB are perfect. And the price is small, and this size will be enough for the tasks being solved. The situation is similar with netbooks and entry-level laptops. But high-performance mobile computers it would be better to equip it with a 128-256 GB solid state drive. Gaming PCs and servers must be equipped with 2 drives. One for systems and programs is STS. And the second is a hard drive that will store user data. This will allow you to get both high performance and the required volume for storing information.
Outcomes
Within the framework of this article, a comprehensive comparison of HDD and SSD was made, their main characteristics are indicated, recommendations for their use are given, following which, you can easily choose the storage device that suits your needs best.
The article is devoted to the analysis of the performance of solid state drives and hard drives. An article has already been presented on our site, which details the pros and cons of an SSD. But this time I would like to focus on comparing the speed characteristics of these devices and tell in detail how great the advantage of solid-state drives is.
Quite often we hear that the superiority of SSDs in performance is not so significant - "only" by 3-4 times. For example, the maximum speed of advanced hard drives is about 160-170 MB / s, while an SSD can show about 550 MB / s. A simple calculation gives a difference of almost 3.5 times. However, the processes occurring when reading information from a carrier are much more complicated, and it is incorrect to directly compare the maximum speeds.
Test results for SSD Vertex 3 and HDD Seagate 3 TB
(clickable)
Take a look at the benchmark results for two devices using the popular CrystalDiskMark software. It will allow you to compare both types of drives in different operating modes. The first drive is an SSD from OCZ called Vertex 3, which has very high performance. The second is modern HDD Seagate with a capacity of 3 TB, which has very high performance. We can say that some of the best representatives of each market segment are compared.
The upper left digit is the linear read speed when data is read sequentially. In this mode, almost all types of media show their maximum capabilities. The hard drive does not have to constantly move the heads, and most of the time is spent reading and transferring data. The solid-state drive, in turn, transmits data in large blocks, using all channels. This behavior of devices is usually observed when copying huge files - movies, archives, DVD images. The speed difference between the two devices is 3.27 times.
The second row of numbers is read in 512k blocks. The hard disk begins to spend more time moving the heads in search of each block, so the speed decreases. SSDs have to do more computation to access different flash memory locations. Please note that the performance of an SSD is 92% of the maximum, and that of a regular hard drive is only 37%. This behavior corresponds to copying a set of small photographs and illustrations or audio files.
The next row is reading in very small 4 KB blocks. It is in this test that the speeds sag the most. A classic hard drive spends the lion's share of the time moving the heads in search of the necessary pieces of information, and the solid-state device performs a huge amount of calculations to find the necessary cells. As a result, the speed of the hard drive dropped 220 times, while that of the SSD only 15 times. Speed difference between the two tested devices on 4K blocks is 52 times... This mode of operation corresponds to the process of loading the operating system, launching applications and copying text documents - that is, the most frequent operations on a PC.
Now it's time to talk about parallel execution of operations. While working on a computer, many processes are running in the system - programs and applications, system utilities, services that can access the drive at any time. It turns out that several read requests can come at the same time. The hard disk is forced to process them one at a time - the heads can read only one file at a time. An SSD, on the other hand, has several memory chips that store information. Therefore, you can process several requests at once, and all of them will be executed in parallel.
The last line just shows the speed of work on 4K blocks with a request queue equal to 32. That is, the situation is simulated when you need to read 32 files of this size at once. As you can see, the hard drive has almost no differences in parallelization, since it can receive only one file at a time, and the SSD reads data in several threads, which allows for a 5.25-fold increase in performance. The slight difference in speed for a hard drive with and without a queue is explained by the presence of the NCQ technology, which somehow orders this queue so as not to "run 2 times back and forth."
For the sake of objectivity, it should be noted that such a deep queue almost never occurs in real conditions. For example, when the operating system boots, the queue value is approximately four.
In other words, if in theory (according to the documentation) the devices differ by 3.5 times, then in real operations during the operation of a computer, the difference can reach much larger values.
The right column in the program window is the recording results for which all of the above is true.
Comparison of the speed distribution of SSD (bottom) and HDD (top)
But that's not all. Check out the other graphs made by HD Tune. They show the distribution of speeds over the space of the drive (blue line). The left part corresponds to the beginning of the disc, the right one - to the end. If the SSD gives out the same speed practically on the entire volume, then the read (and write) of the hard drive seriously drops by the middle of the space, and at the end it drops by more than 2 times. In practice, this means that if the operating system was installed on a full disk, or the last partition on a device, then the drive performance will be noticeably lower than declared. The same goes for the access time (yellow dots), which increases as you move towards the end of the disk space.
It turns out the initial superiority of 3.5 times in practice can result in both 100 and 200 times... And this is in comparison with the best samples of hard drives. There is nothing to say about ordinary discs with average characteristics. Therefore, buy an SSD as soon as possible.
What to choose: SSD or HDD? We compared the two types of drives and found the advantages of each type of device.
HDD and SSD: different principles of work
HDDs and SSDs function completely differently.
Classic HDDs consist of one or more magnetic disks and readheads. The magnetic disks rotate during operation. The read head (mounted on a lever) moves over the surface of the disc and recognizes the stored data.
An SSD, on the other hand, consists of a large number of separate Flash drives, which are built into the disk in the same way as in USB sticks. This means there are no moving mechanical parts in the SSD.
SSD advantages
It seems that for several years now, SSDs have been slowly but surely bypassing classic HDDs in all respects. This is due to the large number of advantages:
HDD advantages
In addition to the many advantages, SSDs also have some disadvantages. We've put together a piece of information on how HDDs are superior to popular SDD drives.
- HDDs are currently much cheaper than SSDs. However, you can also save money by purchasing a new type of storage device. To do this, just take a look at ours and sort the models by price-quality ratio.
- Classic hard drives offer much more storage space. Here, volumes up to 10 TB are possible, while SSDs are still limited to 2 TB.
- If data is lost on the HDD, as a rule, there is some hope of salvation: it is often easy to recover information with the help of special utilities. When it comes to SSDs, data can be very difficult to rescue.
Our tip: use SSHDs that combine the advantages of HDDs with the speed of an SSD.
Greetings!
HDD vs SSD - how are they different and which one is better?
Surely, when buying a new PC or laptop, many have noticed that the type of storage device installed in it - HDD or SSD - can have a significant impact on its price. What is their difference?
Is it worth taking an ssd drive for a computer and what are the advantages of such drives? In this article I will try to answer the questions related to choosing a hard drive for different systems and needs.
The main differences between HDD and SSD
To begin with, it should be noted that despite the general purpose, SSD and HDD are completely different technologies... In fact, the difference between the two is as great as the difference between a CD and a USB flash drive. But what is really there, by and large, HDD - this is a kind of CD, only made of a different material and installed in its own drive. And an SSD is a large, roomy flash drive, with an especially fast data exchange rate, increased capacity and, if we are not talking about an external drive, then with a slightly different way of connecting to the motherboard.
Unlike a hard drive, an SSD does not carry any moving parts. HDD devices are old, analog technologies, while SSDs are new, digital ones.
So what are the benefits of more expensive, modern SSDs versus older hard drives?
Firstly The SSD is smaller and lighter, which is especially useful when assembling compact systems such as laptops and tablets.
Secondly SSDs have a much higher data transfer rate than analog drives, because nothing needs to be recorded or searched for by mechanical action. HDD takes time to distribute data on the plane of the plate, as well as to find information already recorded on it. Especially if the search is conducted in parts of the disk that are very distant from each other. For this reason, the loading of the operating system is somewhat slower, files open longer and the response speed of programs is slower. But saving and reading data from a solid state drive occurs almost instantly.
The speed is usually limited to only throughput interface. Gamers may find this useful so that they do not have to wait for a long time to download and install games, as well as load levels in them.
Thirdly As mentioned earlier, there are no moving elements in SSDs. As a result, SSDs are quieter and more reliable - they are shock and drop resistant. This means that an SSD is better suited as an external storage device for people who want to use one drive for multiple systems, or as a second hard drive for laptops.
Fourth, SSDs are characterized by lower power consumption, and there will hardly ever be any unnecessary savings in electricity.
Now is the time to talk about the disadvantages of these "big sticks"
First drawback, which may seem like a serious problem to many, is the limited lifespan of an SSD. The point is that flash memory has a certain number of rewriting cycles.
The rewriting cycle is the moment when the amount of downloaded data reaches the volume of the drive's memory, or rather, when all the memory cells on it are full. But not in the literal sense of the word - from the fact that you delete data and leave some space on the disk, nothing will change.
What matters is the total weight of the data written to it during its entire service life.
For example, I downloaded a 1 Gigabyte file, then deleted it and uploaded a 2 GB file - and that 3 GB was already written to the disk, even if some of them were deleted.
In addition, due to the peculiarities SSD work, when counting, you need to multiply the amount of data recorded on it by 9-10 times. Those. 3
Gigabytes is almost 30, almost a quarter of the rewriting cycle of a 120 Gigabyte disk. However, these are not exact figures, I took with a margin. In fact, it all depends on how the space on the drive was spent.
Do not be alarmed at once, on average SSDs are designed for 3 years, or even 5 years of service. Unless, of course, you download hundreds of gigabytes of data to them every day.
Unfortunately, I cannot say with certainty which drive is more durable - SSD or HDD. There are many other nuances that affect their lifespan. But in terms of resistance to external influences, clearly wins SSD.
The second drawback is the price.
The price of an SSD can be several times higher than the cost of a hard drive of the same capacity. Surely, over time, the situation will change a little, but today it is more profitable to take such a disk for a PC as an additional one, install it on it operating system and some applications, and everything else is stored on the HDD.
And finally, the last SSD problem, which will probably be solved soon, is the maximum amount of memory. SSDs appeared much later than hard drives, and so far even the best available models cannot hold as much data as a high-end HDD can fit. But this is most likely just a matter of time. You can, simply, use several storage devices at once.
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Conclusion.
On the this moment I don't think that buying a PC or laptop with an SSD would be a good idea for the average user. After all, its price is several times higher than the cost of a good old hard drive. Someone will consider the differences between these two types of drives important for themselves. For example, gamers are very fond of purchasing expensive equipment, even with a slight gain in system performance.
However, the speed of games, i.e. the frame rate, should not be affected by the presence of an SSD drive.
In general, I do not recommend buying an SSD as the only internal hard drive without special need. But as a second drive, it may well justify itself.
Write in the comments what you have chosen or what are you going to choose ssd or hdd for yourself?