SSD vs. HDD: What's the Difference?

BY JOEL SANTO DOMINGO

JUNE 10, 2017, 5:01 A.M.
A hard drive is a hard drive, right? Not exactly. We lay out the differences between
SSD and HDD storage to help you figure out which type is the best choice.

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The Choice Is Yours

Until recently, PC buyers had very little choice about what kind of storage to
get in a laptopor desktop. If you bought an ultraportable, you likely had a
solid-state drive (SSD) as the primary drive (C: on Windows, Macintosh HD
on a Mac). Every other desktop or laptop form factor had a hard disk drive
(HDD). Now, you can configure most systems with either an HDD or an SSD,
or in some cases both. But how do you choose? We explain the differences
between SSDs and HDDs (or hard drives), and walk you through the
advantages and disadvantage of both to help you decide.

HDD and SSD Explained

The traditional spinning hard drive is the basic nonvolatile storage on a
computer. That is, information on it doesn't "go away" when you turn off the
system, as is the case with data stored in RAM. A hard drive is essentially a
metal platter with a magnetic coating that stores your data, whether weather
reports from the last century, a high -definition copy of the original Star
Warstrilogy, or your digital music collection. A read/write head on a n arm
accesses the data while the platters are spinning.

An SSD does functionally everything a hard drive does, but data is instead
stored on interconnected flash memory ch ips that retain the data even when
there's no power present. The chips can either be permanently installed on
the system's motherboard (as on some small laptops and ultraportables), on a
PCI Express (PCIe) card (in some high -end workstations and an increasing
number of bleeding-edge consumer systems), or in a box that's sized,
shaped, and wired to slot in for a laptop or desktop's hard drive (common on
everything else). These flash memory chips are of a different type than is
used in USB thumb drives, and are typically faster and more reliable. SSDs
are consequently more expensive than USB thumb drives of the same
capacities.

Note: We'll be talking primarily about internal drives in this story, but almost
everything applies to external hard drives as well. E xternal drives come in
both large desktop and compact portable form factors, and SSDs are
gradually becoming a larger part of the external market.

A History of HDDs and SSDs

Hard drive technology is relatively ancient (in terms of computer history,
anyway). There are well-known pictures of the infamous IBM 350 RAMAC
hard drive from 1956 that used 50 24 -inch-wide platters to hold a whopping
3.75MB of storage space. This, of cou rse, is the size of an average 128Kbps
MP3 file today, in the physical space that could hold two commercial
refrigerators. The RAMAC 350 was only limited to government and industrial
uses, and was obsolete by 1969. Ain't progress wonderful? The PC hard dri ve
form factor standardized at 5.25 inches in the early 1980s, with the 3.5 -inch
desktop-class and 2.5-inch notebook-class drives coming soon thereafter.
The internal cable interface has changed from serial to IDE (now frequently
called parallel ATA, or PATA) to SCSI to serial ATA (SATA) over the years,
but each essentially does the same thing: connect the hard drive to the PC's
motherboard so your data can be processed. Today's 2.5 - and 3.5-inch drives
mainly use SATA interfaces (at least on most PCs and M acs), though some
high-speed SSDs use the faster PCIe interface instead. Capacities have
grown from multiple megabytes to multiple terabytes, more than a million -fold
increase. Current 3.5-inch hard drives have capacities as high as 10TB, with
consumer-oriented 2.5-inch drives maxing out at 4TB.

The SSD has a much shorter history. There

was always an infatuation with nonmoving storage from the beginning of
personal computing, with technologies like bubble memory flashing (pun
intended) and dying in the 1970s and 1980s. Current flash memory is the
logical extension of the same idea, as it doesn't require constant power to
retain the data you store on it. The first primary drives that we know as SSDs
started during the rise of netbooks in the late 2000s. In 2007, the OLPC XO-
1used a 1GB SSD, and the Asus Eee PC 700 series used a 2GB SSD as
primary storage. The SSD chips on low-end Eee PC units and the XO-1 were
permanently soldered to the motherboard. As netbooks and other
ultraportable laptop PCs became more capable, SSD capacities increased
and eventually standardized on the 2.5 -inch notebook form factor. This way,
you could pop a 2.5-inch hard drive out of your laptop or desktop and replace
it easily with an SSD. Other form factors emerged, like the mSATA Mini PCIe
SSD card, M.2 SSD in SATA and PCIe variants, and the DIMM -like solid-state
Flash Storage in the Apple MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, but today many
SSDs still use the 2.5-inch form factor. The 2.5-inch SSD capacity currently
tops out at 4TB, but a 60TB version for enterprise devices like servers was
released by Seagate in 2016.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Both SSDs and hard drives do the same job: They boot your system, and
store your applications and personal files. But each type of storage has its
own unique feature set. How do they differ, and why would you want to get
one over the other?

Price: SSDs are more expensive than hard drives in terms of dollar per
gigabyte. A 1TB internal 2.5-inch hard drive costs between $40 and $50, but
as of this writing, an SSD of the same capacity and form factor starts at $250.
That translates into 4 to 5 cents per gigabyte for the h ard drive and 25 cents
per gigabyte for the SSD. Since hard drives use older, more established
technology, they will remain less expensive for the near future. Those extra
hundreds for the SSD may push your system price over budget.

Maximum and Common Capacity: Although consumer-based SSD units top

out at 4TB, those are still rare and expensive. You're more likely to find
500GB to 1TB units as primary drives in systems. While 500GB is considered
a "base" hard drive in 2017, pricing concerns can push that do wn to 128GB
for lower-priced SSD-based systems. Multimedia users will require even
more, with 1TB to 4TB drives common in high -end systems. Basically, the
more storage capacity, the more stuff you can keep on your PC. Cloud -based
(Internet) storage may be good for housing files you plan to share among
your phone, tablet, and PC, but local storage is less expensive, and you only
have to buy it once.
Speed: This is where SSDs shine. An SSD-equipped PC will boot in less than
a minute, and often in just seconds. A hard drive requires time to speed up to
operating specs, and will continue to be slower than an SSD during normal
use. A PC or Mac with an SSD boots faster, launches and runs apps faster,
and transfers files faster. Whether you're using your computer for fun, school,
or business, the extra speed may be the difference b etween finishing on time
and failing.

Fragmentation: Because of their rotary recording surfaces, hard drives work

best with larger files that are laid down in contiguous blocks. That way, the
drive head can start and end its read in one continuous motion. When hard
drives start to fill up, large files can become scattered around the disk platter,
causing the drive to suffer from what's called fragmentation. While read/write
algorithms have improved to the point that the effect is minimized, hard drives
can still become fragmented. SSDs can't, however, because the lack of a
physical read head means data can be stored anywhere. Thus, SSDs are
inherently faster.

Durability: An SSD has no moving parts, so it is more likely to keep your

data safe in the event you drop your laptop bag or your system is shaken
about by an earthquake while it's operating. Most hard drives park their
read/write heads when the system is off, but they are flying over the drive
platter at a distance of a few nanometers when they are in o peration.
Besides, even parking brakes have limits. If you're rough on your equipment,
an SSD is recommended.

Availability: Hard drives are more plentiful in budget and older systems, but
SSDs are becoming more prevalent in recently released laptops. That said,
the product lists from Western Digital, Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung, and
Hitachi are still skewed in favor of hard drive models over SSDs. For PCs and
Mac desktops, internal hard drives won't be going away completely, at least
for the next few years. SSD model lines are growing in number: Witness the
number of thin laptops with 256 to 512GB SSDs installed in place of hard
drives.

Form Factors: Because hard drives rely on spinning platters, there is a limit
to how small they can be manufactured. There was an initiative to make
smaller 1.8-inch spinning hard drives, but that's stalled at about 320GB, since
the phablet and smartphone manufacturers have settled on flash memory for
their primary storage. SSDs have no such limitation, so they can continue to
shrink as time goes on. SSDs are available in 2.5 -inch laptop drive-sized
boxes, but that's only for convenience. As laptops continue to become
slimmer and tablets take over as primary platforms for Web surfing, you'll
start to see the adoption of SSDs skyrocket.

Noise: Even the quietest hard drive will emit a bit of noise when it is in use
from the drive spinning or the read arm moving back and forth, particularly if
it's in a system that's been banged about or if it's been improperly installed in
an all-metal system. Faster hard drives will make more noise than those that
are slower. SSDs make virtually no noise at all, since they're non -mechanical.

Power: An SSD doesn't have to expend electricity spinning up a platter from

a standstill. Consequently, none of the energy consumed by the SSD is
wasted as friction or noise, rendering them more efficient. On a desktop or in
a server, that will lead to a lower energy bill. On a laptop or tablet, you'll be
able to eke out more minutes (or hours) of battery life.

Overall: Hard drives win on price, capacity, and availability. SSDs work best
if speed, ruggedness, form factor, noise, or fragmentation (technically part of
speed) are important factors to you. If it weren't for the price and capacity
issues, SSDs would be the hands-down winner.

As far as longevity, while it is true that SSDs wear out over time (each cell in
a flash memory bank can be written to and erased a limited number of times),
thanks to TRIM command technology that dynamically optimizes these
read/write cycles, you're more likely to discard the system for obsolescence
(after six years or so) before you start running into read/write errors with an
SSD. If you're really worried, there are several tools that monitor the
S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drive or SSD, and will let you know if you're
approaching the drive's rated end of life. Hard drives will eventually wear out
from constant use as well, since they use ph ysical recording methods.
Longevity is a wash when it's separated from travel and ruggedness
concerns.

The Right Storage for You

So, does an SSD or HDD (or a hybrid of the two) fit your needs? Let's break it
down:

HDDs
• Enthusiast multimedia users and hea vy downloaders: Video collectors
need space, and you can only get to 4TB of space cheaply with hard drives.
• Budget buyers: Ditto. Plenty of cheap space. SSDs are too expensive for
$500 PC buyers.
• Graphic arts and engineering professionals: Video and photo editors
wear out storage by overuse. Replacing a 1TB hard drive will be cheaper than
replacing a 500GB SSD.
• General users: General users are a toss-up. Folks who prefer to download
their media files locally will still need a hard drive with more ca pacity. But if
you mostly stream your music and videos online, then buying a smaller SSD
for the same money will give you a better experience.

SSDs
• Road warriors: People who shove their laptops into their bags
indiscriminately will want the extra securit y of an SSD. That laptop may not
be fully asleep when you violently shut it to catch your next flight. This also
includes folks who work in the field, like utility workers and university
researchers.
• Speed demons: If you need things done now, spend the extra bucks for
quick boot-ups and app launches. Supplement with a storage SSD or hard
drive if you need extra space (see below).
• Graphic arts and engineering professionals: Yes, we know we said they
need hard drives, but the speed of an SSD may make the difference between
completing two proposals for your client and completing five. These users are
prime candidates for dual-drive systems (more on that below).
• Audio engineers and musicians: If you're recording music, you don't want
the scratchy sound from a hard drive intruding. Go for quieter SSDs.

Hybrid Drives and Dual-Drive Systems

Back in the mid 2000s, some hard drive manufacturers, like Samsung and
Seagate, theorized that if you add a few gigabytes of flash chips to a spinning
hard drive, you'd get a so-called "hybrid" drive combining a hard drive's large
storage capacity with the performance of an SSD, at a price only slightly
higher than that of a typical hard drive. The flash memory acts as a buffer for
frequently used files, so your system has t he potential for booting and
launching your most important apps faster, even though you can't directly
install anything in that space yourself. In practice, hybrid drives work, but
they are still more expensive and more complex than regular hard drives.
They work best for people like road warriors who need both lots of storage
and fast boot times. Since they're an in -between product, hybrid drives don't
necessarily replace dedicated hard drives or SSDs.

In a dual-drive system, the system manufacturer will i nstall a small SSD

primary drive (C:) for the operating system and apps, and add a larger
spinning hard drive (D: or E:) for storing files. This works well in theory; in
practice, manufacturers can go too small on the SSD. Windows itself takes
up a lot of space on the primary drive, and some apps can't be installed on
other drives. Some capacities may also be too small. For example,
you can install Windows on a SSD as small as 16GB, but there will be little
room for anything else. In our opinion, 120GB to 128GB is a practical
minimum size for the C: drive, with 256GB or more being even better. Space
concerns are the same as with any multiple -drive system: You need physical
space inside the PC chassis to hold two (or more) drives.
Last but not least, an SSD and a hard drive can be combined (like Voltron) on
systems with technologies like Intel's Smart Response Technology (SRT).
SRT uses the SSD invisibly to act as a cache to help the system more
speedily boot and launch programs. As on a hybrid drive, the SSD is not
directly accessible by the end user. SRT requires true SSDs, like those in
2.5-inch form factors, but those drives can be as small as 16GB in capacity
and still boost performance; since the operating system isn't being installed to
the SSD directly, you avoid the drive space problems of the dual -drive
configuration mentioned above. On the other hand, your PC will need space
for two drives, a requirement that may exclude some laptops and small-form-
factor desktops. You'll also need the SSD and your system's motherboard to
support the caching technology for this scenario to work. All in all, however,
it's an interesting workaround.

The Storage of Tomorrow

It's unclear whether SSDs will totally replace traditional spinning hard drives,
especially with shared cloud storage waiting in the wings. The price of SSDs
is coming down, but they're still too expensive to totally replace the terabytes
of data that some users have in their PCs and Macs. Cloud storage isn't free,
either: You'll continue to pay as long as you want personal storage on the
Internet. Local storage won't go away until we have ubiquitous wireless
Internet everywhere, including in planes and out in the wilderness. Of course,
by that time, there may be something better.

Looking for some extra storage? Check out our list of the best external hard
drives. Or if you want to protect or store your files online, check out our
roundups of the best cloud storage and file-syncing services and the best
online backup services.