Until just a few years ago, PC buyers had little choice about what kind of storage to get in a laptop or desktop PC. If you bought an ultraportable anytime in the last few years, you very likely got a solid-state drive (SSD) as the primary boot drive. Larger laptops are increasingly moving to SSD boot drives, too, while budget machines still tend to favour hard disk drives (HDDs). The boot drives in desktop PCs, meanwhile, are a mishmash of SSDs or HDDs; in some cases, a system comes with both, with the SSD as the boot drive and the HDD as a bigger-capacity storage supplement.

♦ What is a Hard Disk Drive?

A traditional hard disk drive (HDD) has spinning plates that store your information. These drives have come a long way since they were first built in the early 1960’s and they double in capacity about every 18 months.The technology behind hard disk drives is well-known and well-tested. Hard disk drives have been around for more than 50 years, steadily increasing their storage capacity and decreasing their physical size. HDDs rely on spinning disks, or platters, to read and write data.

♦ What’s a Solid-State Drive?

Solid state drives are a newer technology, but have progressed rapidly, adding more storage capacity each year. SSDs rely on electronic storage in non-volatile memory, meaning that data won’t disappear when the computer is turned off.SSDs can be thought of as large USB drives; they use the same base technology. NAND, the technology in solid state drives is a kind of flash memory. At the lowest level, floating gate transistors record a charge (or lack of a charge) to store data. The gates are organized in a grid pattern, which is further organized into a block. Block size can vary, but each row that makes up the grid is called a page.There is an SSD controller that performs several functions, including keeping track of where data is located.

∇ Differences between Hard Disk Drive and Solid-State Drive ∇

• Components : It is known that the primary difference between hard disk drive and solid-state drive must be the imparity of their components. The hard disk drive contains the mechanical moving parts, which will constantly spin up when reading or writing data. But solid-state drive doesn’t have that. It is totally made up electronically.
• Speed : Since that the solid-state drive doesn’t need to spin in read/write operations, it has a better performance than the standard hard disk drive in terms of speed, no matter the booting, loading or transferring speed. But to be honest, for common computers, the speed of hard disk drive is totally ample and appropriate.
• Storage Capacity : From the perspective of storage capacity, hard disk drive will be recommended. It is because that you can procure a hard disk drive with large storage capacity only by little money. By comparison, even though solid-state drive can also offer large storage, but it is considerably expensive above 240 GB.
• Reliability : As mentioned at the beginning, both of the two kinds of drives cannot be immune from failure. So actually, their failing rates are very approximate. Do you know the solid-state hybrid drive? It is a mix of hard disk drive and solid-state drive. Also, it has the improved reliability in that it combines the advantages of the two.
• Duality : For duality, the solid-state drive will win. Depending on the foresaid, solid state drive has no moving parts, which are vulnerable to malfunction. So unlike the hard disk drive, a solid state drive can be exempt from the moving part damages. But although it is more durable, you should still keep care of it.
• Power-Efficiency : If you’re choosing whether to use a solid-state drive or hard disk drive in your PC, you may take the power efficiency into consideration. As usual, the data storage device won’t make much impact on the battery life on your PC. If you want to specify it, a solid-state drive is more power-efficient.
• Price : The last but not the least comparison must be their prices. As I mentioned in the 5th part, the price of the solid-state drive with low storage capacity, ranging from 32 GB to 240 GB, is affordable. But if high-capacity solid state drives will be very expensive. So, in light of price, by contrast, hard disk drive will be a better choice.

The difference between hard drives and solid-state drives is in the technology used to store and retrieve data. HDDs are cheaper and you can get more storage space. SSDs, however, are faster, lighter, more durable, and use less energy. Your needs will dictate which storage drive will work best for you.