Solid state drives (SDD) have become more and more prevalent in the computer world recently and have been receiving very positive reviews. But, what exactly is better about an SSD drive over my hard drive (HDD) and why is it more expensive for less space?
The most fundamental difference between a SSD and a HDD is the way it stores memory. HDDs work using a spinning platter coated in a magnetic material that is used to record data similar to how cassettes store data using the magnetic film. This technology has been around for a good while and it is capable of storing very large amounts of data. SSDs use flash memory similar to the memory card in your camera or smartphone. SSD drives don’t have moving parts which serves many benefits such as speed of read and write times, and a reduced rate of failure. HDDs are currently the bottleneck of most modern systems and the increased speeds that SSD provides is solving that problem. Another possible option is to use a hybrid hard drive, the “middle ground” between HHD and SSD, which combines the two technologies resulting in higher storage space and faster speeds. Although the price is a little higher than a typical hard drive, a SSD drive can allow applications to load faster, computers to boot up faster, and the user to have more time to spend getting work done.
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