The
standard hard disk drive (HDD) has been the data storage workhorse for
computers since the beginning of the personal computer. This is because HDD’s
are reasonably fast, reliable, and very affordable. But soon, solid state
drives (SSD’s) may rapidly take their place.
What is an SSD and how does it differ from an HDD?
Like
hard drives, SSD’s store data on a computer. They look almost the same as hard
drives, and in fact it takes only a few minutes to switch from an HDD to an
SSD. While an HDD has a spinning disk and other moving parts that run the hard
disk’s storage, SSD’s use microchips to store data, a technology similar to
that used in digital camera memory cards and USB memory sticks.
3 Reasons to switch to SSD
§ SSD’s
have faster speeds. Hard drives have to ‘spin up’ before they can read or
write your data, and they have to locate that data on its magnetic disk. In
contrast, SSD’s have no moving parts and can find and transfer data much more
quickly.
§ SSD’s
are more robust. When dropped or subjected to sudden shock, they are less
likely than hard drives to have a drop in performance or fail altogether.
§ SSD’s
use less power. Solid state drives contain no power-hungry motors, so this
means that when used in laptops, they can make a noticeable difference to
overall battery life, or consumes less current power on desktops.
When a 500GB SSD
is matched in performance to a standard 750GB, 5400-rpm HDD on a laptop, there
is a considerable performance improvement of around 56 percent when an SSD is
used. Even when the comparison uses a tower desktop PC, comparing a standard
1TB, 7200-rpm hard drive and a 250GB SSD, the SSD boosts up PC performance by
up to 60 percent. Boot time for computers are also reduced when using an SSD,
from 63 seconds down to 23 seconds.
But aside from
the obvious performance advantages of SSD’s over HDD’s, solid state drives are
far more expensive than SSD’s. For instance, a 500GB SSD may cost around $200,
while an equivalent HDD will cost only around $50. Because of this, SSD’s tend
to be used only on high-end computers, on servers, or for big businesses or
corporations.
Consider
switching to SSD for your business or company.
Remember that
SSD’s can read and write data faster, so you’ll see particular advantages in
situations where you need to manipulate a lot of data such as when using large
databases with your customer relationship management system or saving or
processing big files such as videos or complex images.
