Differences, advantages and disadvantages, in the use of an HDD hard disk or SSD solid state drive on the computer.
Until recently it was assumed that there was a hard disk in the new computer .
Today, especially in laptops, you can choose to mount a normal hard drive or a more modern SSD, or solid-state drive.
The traditional hard disk , called with the acronym HDD , is the fixed memory of a computer, the one that is not emptied when the computer is turned off (as instead RAM does).
Hard drives are essentially metal plates with a magnetic coating where data is stored from a head that reads and writes.
An SSD is always a fixed memory like the HDD but has a different construction: instead of having a magnetic plate that runs, it is a flash memory chip like RAM, but capable of keeping data in memory even if there is not current, ie even when the computer is off.
The chip can be permanently installed on the system motherboard (as on some small laptops and ultrabooks), on a PCI / PCIe card (in some high-end workstations), or in a box.
These flash memory chips are also different from the flash memory of USB drives, faster and more reliable.
SSDs are therefore more expensive than USB drives with the same capacity.
Hard disk technology, to make some history, is quite old (in terms of computer history).
You can start from the infamous IBM 350 RAMAC of 1956 with 24-inch plates of width and capacity of 3.75 MB.
Today's drives are 2.5 or 3.5 inches and use SATA interfaces on most PCs and Macs.
Capacities have grown from those few megabytes to more terabytes, an increase of millions of times over 50 years ago.
The SSD is nothing more than the evolution of flash memory and we could say that they made their appearance in 2007 with the Asus EEPC mini netbooks, with capacities of 2 or 4 GB.
SSD and HDD do the same job of booting the system, loading programs, storing personal files.
There are, however, many differences, in terms of advantages and disadvantages, in the use of an HDD hard disk or SSD solid state unit which determine the choice of one or the other.
Let's start with the price .
SSDs are very expensive in terms of euros per GB.
For example, a 2.5-inch TB hard disk can cost 50 euros while an equal one terabyte SSD could cost 445 USD
Hard disks cost less because they are an older and more established technology and because, as we will see, it has lower performance.
So if a 1 TB SSD costs too much, you can buy a 250 GB SSD for 110 USD
Today the availability of SSDs is higher than that of traditional HDDs that are slowly decreasing in the market.
Speed
The SSD costs more than a hard disk because it is much faster.
The hard disk has always been the slowest component of a computer, the bottleneck in data processing.
A PC with SSD is capable of booting up in seconds and will continue to be faster than a HDD during normal operation.
A PC or Mac with SSD is able to load programs faster with much better performance.
This marked improvement in performance makes the SSD the perfect disk in which to install the operating system.
Fragmentation
HDDs work best with large files that are saved in contiguous blocks on the plate.
In this way, the head can start and end its reading in a single continuous movement.
However, when hard drives begin to fill up, large files can be scattered across the disk tray, which means being fragmented.
In SSDs, on the other hand, it doesn't matter where the data is stored because there is no head.
Fragmentation is a concept that does not exist on SSD units.
Duration
An SSD has no moving parts, so it is more difficult to break than the HDD which instead always moves (at speeds of hundreds of km / h) and has a high risk of failure.
The life of an SSD is however limited to a certain number of writings (even if today the TRIM technology has limited this problem) and there are some precautions for maintaining the SSD and things to never do on computers with SSD .
Dimensions
Since hard drives rely on rotating cymbals, they cannot be as small as SSDs, which can really be very small.
Noise : SSDs are silent while, of course, HDDs, while in motion, always make a certain noise.
In general , traditional hard disks are preferable, even today, only if there is a need to store lots of data, so as not to spend too much money.
However, SSDs work better and are faster, stronger, quieter and more resistant .
If it were not for the problems of price and limited capacity, the SSD would win the comparison with hands down.
It is important to know that it is possible to replace the primary hard disk with an SSD, on the desktop computer and on the laptop.
For example, if you have a fixed desktop PC, you could buy the SSD, transfer Windows and programs to the SSD and leave all the fixed files, images, photos, music, videos and various files on the old hard disk, which becomes secondary.
If instead you have a laptop with a hard disk, you could replace the CD-ROM drive with the SSD (work that can be done by the technician or in a computer store). If you are looking any type of data recovery of SSD or HDD then UAE Data Recovery professionals is the best choice to recover 100% data.