Which is better - SSD or HDD? What is the difference between SSD and HDD and which is better? Faster ssd or hdd

Greetings!

HDD vs SSD - how do they differ and which one is better?

Surely, when buying a new PC or laptop, many have noticed that it is the type of storage device installed in it - HDD or SSD - that can have a significant impact on its price. What is their difference?

Is it worth taking an ssd drive for a computer and what are the advantages of such drives? In this article, I will try to answer questions related to choosing a hard drive for various systems and needs.

The main differences between HDD and SSD

To begin with, it should be noted that despite the general purpose, SSD and HDD are completely different technologies. In fact, the difference between them is as big as the difference between a CD and a flash drive. But what is there, by and large, HDD - this is a kind of CD, only made from a different material and installed in its own drive. And an SSD is a large, capacious flash drive, with a particularly fast data transfer rate, increased capacity and, if we are not talking about an external drive, then with a slightly different way of connecting to the motherboard.

Unlike a hard drive, an SSD does not carry any moving parts. HDD devices are old, analog technologies, while SSDs are new, digital.

So what are the advantages of more expensive, modern SSDs compared to older hard drives?

First of all, SSD has a smaller size and weight, which is especially useful when assembling compact systems such as laptops and tablets.

Secondly, SSDs have a much higher data transfer rate than analog drives, because nothing needs to be written or searched out by mechanical actions. The HDD takes time to distribute the data on the platter plane, as well as to find the information already recorded on it. Especially if the search is conducted in parts of the disk that are very distant from each other. For this reason, the operating system is somewhat slower to load, files take longer to open, and programs are less responsive. But saving and reading data from a solid state drive is almost instantaneous.

Speed, as a rule, is limited only by the bandwidth of the interface. Gamers may find this useful so that they do not have to wait a long time for downloading and installing games, as well as downloading levels in them.

Thirdly, as mentioned earlier, there are no moving elements in the SSD. As a result, SSDs are quieter and more reliable – they are shock and drop resistant. So, an SSD is better suited as an external storage device for people who want to use one drive for multiple systems, or as a second hard drive for laptops.

Fourth, SSDs tend to consume less power, and there will hardly ever be unnecessary energy savings.

It's time to talk about the disadvantages of these "big flash drives"

First disadvantage, which may seem like a serious problem to many - the limited lifespan of an SSD. The fact is that flash memory has a certain number of rewriting cycles.

The rewrite cycle is the moment when the amount of downloaded data reaches the storage capacity of the drive, or rather, when all the memory cells on it are filled. But not in the literal sense of the word - from the fact that you delete data and leave some space on the disk, nothing will change.

What matters is the total weight of the data written to it over its lifetime.

For example, I uploaded a 1 GB file, then deleted it and uploaded a 2 GB file - and that already 3 GB was written to disk, even though some of them were deleted.

In addition, due to the peculiarities of the operation of the SSD, when counting, you need to multiply the amount of data recorded on it by 9-10 times. Those. 3

A gigabyte is almost 30, almost a quarter of the rewrite cycle of a 120 gigabyte disc. However, these are not exact numbers, I took it with a margin. In fact, it all depends on how the space on the drive was spent.

Do not be scared right away, on average, SSDs are designed for 3 years, or even 5 years of service. Unless, of course, hundreds of gigabytes of data are downloaded to them daily.

Unfortunately, I cannot say with certainty which disk is more durable - SSD or HDD. There are many other nuances that affect their life expectancy. But in terms of resistance to external influences, the SSD clearly wins.

The second disadvantage is the price.

The price of an SSD can be many times higher than the cost of a hard drive of the same capacity. Surely, over time, the situation will change a little, but today it is more profitable to take such a disk for a PC as an additional one, install an operating system and some applications on it, and store everything else on the HDD.

And finally, the last SSD problem, which will probably be solved soon, is the maximum amount of memory. SSDs appeared much later than hard drives, and so far even the best available models cannot hold as much data as a high-priced HDD will fit. But it is most likely only a matter of time. You can, simply, use several storage devices at once.

This ssd costs $11,000

Here is the characteristic

Conclusion.
At the moment, I don't think that buying a PC or laptop with an SSD would be a good idea for the average user. After all, its price is several times higher than the cost of the good old hard drive. Someone will consider the differences between these two types of drives important for themselves. For example, gamers are very fond of purchasing expensive equipment, even with a slight gain in system performance.

However, the speed of games, i.e. the frame rate, should not be affected by the presence of an SSD drive.
In general, without special need, I still do not recommend buying an SSD as the only internal hard drive. But as a second drive, it may well justify itself.

Write in the comments what did you choose or what are you going to choose for yourself ssd or hdd?

What is SSD vs HDD? Of course, these are beautiful numbers in various test applications, an opportunity to brag to friends and interlocutors. It has been proven by practice: solid-state drives really allow you to “revive” the system quite well. However, there are very few real "live" values. In principle, it is understandable: it is convenient to fix the difference in applications specially tailored for this, and not in games and so on.

advertising

SSD models are different: slow and fast, cheap and expensive. And it is far from always possible to equate the pairs "cheap" and "slow", "expensive" and "fast", it is enough to compare, for example, the prices of the Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB and the Kingston V310 960 GB. But is there a difference between SSDs of different categories in practice? The question is quite interesting and sometimes causing a lot of very heated debate on various Internet forums.

So, our task today: no "synthetics". At all. Well, so that life does not seem like sugar, the specified condition will be supplemented with another one: the processor in the test bench will operate in two modes - at the standard frequency of 3.3 GHz (fixed, Turbo Boost disabled) and overclocked to 4.5 GHz. As a result, thanks to our partner - the company Regard, we will not only compare different models of drives with each other, but also check the dependence on CPU overclocking.

Test participants

Several different drives were selected for practical testing. First of all, hard drives, where without them? The final list of participants consisted of two HDDs and four SSDs.

HDD Western Digital Red 4TB (WD40EFRX-68WT0N0). Of course, the choice is not the most representative, but in general it may well illustrate the situation with most modern hard drives;

HDD Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB. Quite old, but still quite relevant model of the "laptop" class. It is generally believed among users that a 2.5" form factor HDD is slower than its 3.5" "desktop" counterparts. Its testing, apparently, is complicated by the presence of BMG car parking, which is not disabled by the usual settings of the operating system: during measurements, “outliers” were found much more often than usual - indicators that differ significantly from the average, and for the worse;

SSD GK K3 120 GB. The so-called "Chinese" SSD: one of those that can be found for sale on the well-known marketplace AliExpress and the like. Extremely tempting price tags: about 2600-2700 rubles for 120 GB, while more eminent brands “start” from the bar of 3100 rubles and above (at the time of this writing). But the level of its performance is very upsetting, judging by the tests we conducted. At that time, the conclusion was made about suitability only for a user who does not operate with large amounts of data, let's see how true it is;

SSD Kingston V300 120GB (SV300S37A/120G). This drive is known to the general public much better and not least because of the scandal. On various Internet forums, the V300 is still taunted by everyone and sundry to this day. However, it is one of the cheapest SSDs on the market and is therefore in high demand. But how much it is inferior in reality, or is it more unfounded fears, it will become clear in the course of the review;

SSD OCZ Vector 180 240 GB (VTR180-25SAT3-240G). This is already a solution of a class above: the latest model, new algorithms in the microcode of the controller for data protection, an updated platform in the hardware part, high speed characteristics even in those conditions where the rest are losing ground. More details can be found in the corresponding review;

SSD Kingston HyperX Predator 480 GB (SHPM2280P2H/480G). His review was released under the heading "Shaking the Foundation": unexpectedly for the masses, Kingston turned away from its beloved SandForce platform and in January of this year released a high-speed PCI-Express M.2 NGFF drive on a Marvell controller. Yes, not anyhow, but 88SS9293. And it is unique: the only solution on this controller that is on sale.
And let Plextor show its M7e at various exhibitions for a long time, but that's all. According to the latest rumors, the M7e will be sold in the fall, when no one needs it anymore: HyperX Predator and even faster Samsung SM951 launched at retail just a month and a half ago (not yet available on the Russian market) will cover demand.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the performance of solid state drives and hard drives. An article has already been presented on our website, which describes in detail the pros and cons of SSD. But this time I would like to focus on comparing the speed characteristics of these devices and tell in detail how great the advantage of solid state drives is.

Quite often we hear that the superiority of SSD in performance is not so significant - "only" 3-4 times. For example, the maximum speed of advanced hard drives is about 160-170 MB / s, while an SSD can show about 550 MB / s. A simple calculation gives a difference of almost 3.5 times. However, the processes that occur when reading information from the media are much more complicated, and it is incorrect to directly compare the maximum speeds.

Test results for SSD Vertex 3 and HDD Seagate 3 TB
(clickable)

Take a look at the test results for two devices using the popular CrystalDiskMark software. It will allow you to compare both types of drives in different operating modes. The first drive is an SSD manufactured by OCZ called Vertex 3, which has very high performance. The second is a modern 3TB Seagate hard drive with very high performance. We can say that some of the best representatives of each market segment are compared.

The top number on the left is the linear read speed when data is read sequentially. In this mode, almost all types of media show their maximum capabilities. The hard disk does not have to constantly move heads, and most of the time is spent reading and transferring data. The solid state drive, in turn, transmits data in large blocks, while using all channels. This behavior of devices is usually observed when copying huge files - movies, archives, DVD images. The speed difference between the two devices is 3.27 times.

The second row of numbers is reading in 512k blocks. The hard drive starts spending more time moving heads looking for each block, so the speed slows down. An SSD has to do more calculations to access different flash memory cells. Please note that SSD performance is 92% of the maximum, while a conventional hard drive is only 37%. This behavior corresponds to copying a set of small photos and illustrations or audio files.

The next row is reading in very small blocks of 4 KB. It is in this test that the speeds sag the most. A classic hard drive spends the lion's share of time moving heads in search of the right pieces of information, and a hard drive performs a huge amount of calculations to find the right cells. As a result of this, the speed of the hard drive dropped by 220 times, and that of the SSD - only 15 times. The speed difference between the two tested devices on 4K blocks is 52 times. This mode of operation corresponds to the process of loading the operating system, launching applications and copying text documents - that is, the most frequent operations on a PC.

Now it's time to talk about the parallel execution of operations. While working on a computer, many processes are running in the system - programs and applications, system utilities, services that can access the drive at any time. It turns out that at one point in time several requests for reading can come. The hard disk is forced to process them one at a time - the heads can only read one file at a time. But the SSD has several memory chips that store information. Therefore, you can process several requests at once, and all of them will be executed in parallel.

The last line just shows the speed of work on 4K blocks with a request queue of 32. That is, the situation is simulated when you need to read 32 files of this size at once. As you can see, the hard drive has almost no differences in parallelization, since it can only receive one file at a time, and the SSD reads data in several streams, which allows you to increase performance by 5.25 times. A small difference in speeds between a hard drive with and without a queue is due to the presence of NCQ technology, which somehow arranges this very queue so as not to “run back and forth 2 times”.

For the sake of objectivity, it should be noted that such a deep queue almost never occurs in real conditions. For example, when the operating system boots, the queue value is approximately four.

In other words, if in theory (according to the documentation) the devices differ by 3.5 times, then in real operations when the computer is running, the difference can reach much larger values.

The right column in the program window is the results of the recording, for which all of the above is true.

Comparison of speed distribution of SSD (bottom) and HDD (top)

But that is not all. Take a look at the other graphics made by HD Tune. They show the distribution of speeds over the storage space (blue line). The left part corresponds to the beginning of the disk, the right part corresponds to the end. If the SSD gives the same speed on almost the entire volume, then by the middle of the space, reading (and writing) seriously sags in the hard drive, and at the end it drops by more than 2 times. In practice, this means that if the operating system was installed on a full disk, or the last partition on the device, then the performance of the drive will be noticeably lower than declared. The same goes for the access time (yellow dots), which grows as you move towards the end of the disk space.

It turns out, the initial superiority of 3.5 times in practice can result in both 100 and 200 times. And this is compared with the best samples of hard drives. There is nothing to say about ordinary disks with average characteristics. So buy an SSD as soon as possible.

What is better HDD or SSD- when you are going to upgrade your computer or assemble a new system unit. Then at such a moment you are probably faced with a choice of what to choose from the components of a solid-state drive SSD or hard drive HDD. How to determine which is the best of these data storage components? It is impossible to answer this question unequivocally, so it will be easier to deal with this task together with you.

How are these devices different?

We hope that almost any computer owner has an idea about a hard drive and knows what functions it performs. This is a mechanism on hard magnetic disks designed to store accumulated information in electronic form. It is made in a small metal case, inside it is installed a spindle motor for rotating a set of magnetic plates.

It is from these plates that information is extracted or it is written to them using a block of magnetic heads. The speed of rotation of standard discs is 5400 and 7200 rpm, depending on the type of device. Hard drives come in two formats 2.5, which is mainly installed in laptops and 3.5 inches for personal computers. In addition, there is also an SSD solid-state drive, which we will discuss below, so nevertheless, Which is better HDD or SSD?

Positive and negative characteristics of these storage devices

Let's try together to find out the advantages of SSD over HDD:

1. The main advantage of the SSD, which is based on memory, is the high speed of information conversion. Ordinary hard drives have write / read speeds within 120 Mbps, while a solid state hard drive can reach speeds of more than 550 Mbps. Especially when the SSD is running on a PCI Express parallel bus interface. The speed of obtaining information from a solid state is within 0.25 ms, while for a standard hard drive it is about 4 ms. Here you can see for yourself what a big difference between them.

2. In the design of hard drives, there are parts of a movable read head. Therefore, during the operation of the device, they are quite noisy, unlike absolutely silent solid state drives. In addition, after a while of hard work, it starts to heat up decently. While a chip-based drive works without any heat at all. Already now, without delving too deeply into the differences between these two devices, we can compare, which is better HDD or SSD.

3. The negative aspects of the HDD include intolerance to vibration and sharp shocks. Mechanical influences of this type can erase some part of the information or the device will completely stop working. The "solid state" perfectly resists all kinds of vibrations, which is due to its special design.

4. Therefore, we can conclude from this: for a laptop, this is a great option, especially when you often travel in a car. Although, if we approach the comparison in principle, then we can unequivocally state which is better HDD or SSD not worth it. Subject to simple operating rules, avoiding power surges, both of these devices can work for a long time.

5. As for solid-state storage devices in terms of weight, they are practically weightless, somewhere in the region of 50 grams. Meanwhile, hard drives on magnetic disks have a significant weight. In addition to this, this feature is very relevant for portable computer models. What's more, SSDs don't require as much power as a standard computer hard drive.

Comparative characteristics of HDD and SSD

Parameter	HDD	SSD
Price	One of the cheapest memory options.	High cost (3-4 times higher than that of a traditional hard drive).
Reliability	The average life of a hard drive is 5 years, it is resistant to power surges, but unstable to vibrations.	Depends on the number of write cycles, but with active use, the service life is lower than that of the HDD, it is not resistant to power surges, and it is resistant to vibrations.
Access speed	About 250 Mbps.	There are models with access speeds over 1 Gbps.
energy efficiency	Low, since working with the disk is accompanied by its rotation and the operation of the electric motor.	When the disk is not being accessed, it practically does not consume electricity; in active mode, the consumption is 10 times lower than that of the HDD.
Heat dissipation	Moderate, heats up to 50C ° during active work.	Virtually no heat during operation.
Noisiness	Noisier than the cooling system.	Silent in any mode of operation.
Dimensions and weight	Pretty bulky.	Weighs 2-4 times less than HDD.
Capacity	You can buy a model for 8-16 TB.	Mostly there are models for 64–512 GB, models over 1 TB are very expensive.

One could assume that HDD drives are losing ground in favor of modern SSDs in all respects, but one can still argue here:

The cost of computer hard drives is significantly lower than solid-state drives, and besides, they have a much larger capacity. If we compare these devices in terms of volume, then this is the picture. A hard drive with a storage capacity of 2TB will cost within five thousand rubles. A solid state with a capacity of 500 gigabytes will pull 10,000 rubles;
if you need a drive for data storage, then on sale you can purchase a device with a capacity from 1 TB to 1.2 TB. Although by today's standards, this is quite small. Hard drives on magnetic platters are implemented with capacities of 8, 10, 12 TB, there are even more, such disk space is too much for an ordinary user;
in case of careless actions, you erased any file on your hard drive, then using special programs you can restore it without any problems. Such manipulations on an SSD cannot be performed.

By the way, here is an informational video review on the topic:

HDD or SDD - which is better

Final conclusion

What decision can be made on this topic when comparing outdated and modern technologies? And Which is better HDD or SSD? In the event that you are not going to store a large amount of electronic data, then a separate piece of advice. Subject to the rational use of free disk space. That is, after watching a movie or finishing a game, for example, you simply delete them.

Under such conditions, it would be quite advisable to purchase an SSD with a capacity of up to 256 GB, this volume will be enough to install the OS and the necessary files. If you really love games, then you definitely need a solid state drive. It is great for this, while providing high speed loading of games and all related modules.

There is an opinion, of course, a purely personal one, that at present, the best option for the average user is to purchase an SSD and HDD. If you take yourself a small solid state drive with a capacity of 120-240 GB, you will be able to put an OS and a couple of games there.

On the hard drive, in turn, you can store a movie library, music files and other data. Such a variation will cost you much less than purchasing one SSD with a capacity of 500GB to 1TB. Here, of course, it all depends on your budget, if funds allow, then it will be possible to take all drives in SSD format for a PC.

Do you need expensive SSDs?

What to choose: SSD or HDD? We compared the two types of drives and found the benefits of each type of device.

HDD and SSD: different principles of operation

HDD and SSD function completely differently.

Classic HDDs consist of one or more magnetic disks and read heads. During operation, magnetic disks rotate. The read head (mounted on a lever) moves over the surface of the disc and recognizes the stored data.

An SSD, on the other hand, consists of a large number of separate Flash drives that are built into the drive in the same way as USB flash drives. This means that there are no moving mechanical parts in an SSD.

Benefits of an SSD

It seems that for several years now, SSD drives have been slowly but surely bypassing classic HDDs in all respects. The reason for this is a large number of advantages:

Advantages of HDD

In addition to a large number of advantages, SSDs also have some disadvantages. We have put together for you information on how HDDs are superior to popular SDD drives.

HDD is currently much cheaper than SSD. However, you can also save money by purchasing a new type of storage media. To do this, just take a look at our and sort the models according to the ratio of price and quality.
Classic hard drives offer much more storage space. Volumes up to 10 TB are possible here, while SSDs are still limited to 2 TB.
When data is lost on the HDD, as a rule, there is some hope of salvation: it is often easy to recover information using special utilities. When it comes to SSD, the data will be very difficult to save.

Our advice: Use SSHDs, which combine the benefits of HDDs with the speed of SSDs.