Everyone knows what a hard disk drive (HDD) is, right? And a fair percentage know what a solid state drive (SSD) is, too. But the “why do I care?” part is where many people’s confidence in the subject matter starts to diminish, so let’s go into this from the beginning.
Let’s start at the very beginning. Remember those round paper-thin disks enclosed in a square envelope, called a floppy disk drive, or a “floppy”? You slid them into your PC or Mac to boot the OS, or to load a program. These were sorely limited in space and speed, but I’m sure you’ve forgotten all about that, even if you’re old enough to know what I’m talking about.
The next major innovation was the HDD. Because it was sealed inside an enclosure and manufactured to precision tolerances, this miraculous invention was able to store more information, and access it faster. Further technological advances brought faster speeds, larger capacities, and the resulting drop in price per megabyte of data. The HDD was permanently installed inside the computer, and was able to store multiple programs, reducing the need to do the “floppy shuffle”.
As computers themselves got faster, the limitations of HDD performance became much more of an issue. An HDD is somewhat analogous to a vinyl phonograph record (I hope you all remember what that was?), with the data being recorded on one or more rotating platters in multiple tracks. The difference of course is that the HDD rotates much faster, and data is accessible at random locations, not just in a single track that spirals sequentially from one beginning to one end. Multiple methods were invented to mitigate the reduced performance that resulted when trying to read or write data from/to scattered locations on the HDD, but only so much improvement was possible.
Enter the solid state drive (SSD) concept. Computer random access memory (RAM), or chip memory, provides extremely fast access to data. What if RAM data were stored behind a “disguise” that looked to the OS (Windows or MacOS) just like an HDD? No changes were necessary in the OS because it thinks it’s talking to an HDD…the only difference is that the data is available much, much faster. These SSDs were originally available in an HDD form factor, so that you could simply plug them into a computer to replace an existing HDD. Later, as they became more widely used in production computers, they started to adopt their own custom form factors because they didn’t need to be as large as an HDD to store the same amount of data.
At this point you may be wondering exactly how fast these SSDs are. Of course, as always, it depends on the application. I throw out 10x faster, but mainly to emphasize the huge difference in performance. Any detailed analysis would show that number as being too high or too low but let me provide a case in point. I had one client whose PC took 1 minute and 50 seconds to boot. After I swapped out the HDD with an SSD, it took only 20 seconds to boot. That’s not 10x, but it’s enough to blow your mind when you’ve been used to getting a cup of coffee while your PC boots.
What about reliability factors of HDDs vs. SSDs? It really depends on how you look at this (do I ever begin my answers to anything without starting with “It depends…”?) but SSDs are a little more reliable. HDDs are old technology and have been around for a long time, with ever-improving technology and manufacturing techniques, but as long as you stick to the more reliable brands, their failure rate is pretty infinitesimal. I won’t say which brands here online, but I’m happy to share my experience if you want to email me.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a few statistics on SSDs vs. HDDs.
