With growth of options available for SSD drives today we take a look at SSD vs HDD comparison that can help decide which is a better option.
SSD vs HDD Storage Technology Comparison
Solid-state drives can serve the same purpose as hard disk drives. In general solid state drives serve as a boot or system or working data drive while HDD can provide bulk data storage. In case of SSD, rather than storing data on spinning disk platter data is stored in non-volatile NAND flash memory. There are two types of flash memory used in solid state drives, Single Level Cell and Multi Level Cell.
SLC vs MLC Flash Memory Comparison For SSD
Single level cell (SLC) memory which is faster can sustain lot more writes than Multi level cell (MLC) memory, but is also costlier. SLC memory is widely used in enterprise class solid state drives. Some high end consumer grade SSD also
use SLC memory, these are however generally of very low capacity, and cost much more than one with MLC memory.
SSD vs HDD Speed Comparison
A good MLC solid state drive is still faster than any HDD. On the other hand least expensive solid state drive use very slow flash memory chips, and may have read and write data transfer rates that are lower than a HDD. A similar SSD that uses the fastest available flash memory chips may have data transfer rates two or three times higher than the fastest hard disk drives. HDD and SSD support SATA interface.
SSD vs HDD Mechanical Component Comparison
Solid state drives have no moving parts and are therefore much less subject to shock damage than HDD rotating drives. In fact hard disk drives can also be adversely affected by electromagnetic field while solid state drives are not affected.
SSD vs HDD Life Comparison
In case of SSD, individual cells that are used to store data have a limited life. Once a cell exceeds that number of writes, it is no longer usable. TRIM technology maximizes the usable life of an SSD by adopting a garbage collection approach that minimizes writes when data is deleted from the cells.
SSD vs HDD Performance Comparison
A heavily used solid state drive can begin to show performance degradation after only a few weeks or even days of use. With TRIM enabled, that same drive will provide excellent performance for months or even years of use. HDD have no such limitation on number of writes.
HDD are subjected to fragmentation which slows it down due to higher seek times however since solid state drives have no moving parts this problem can be ignored completely.
SSD vs HDD Noise and Power Comparison
Solid state drives produce less sound or heat when compared to HDD as there are no mechanical or moving parts. The power consumption in solid state drives can be quite lower when compared to HDD.
SSD vs HDD Cost Comparison
Cost per byte for SSD could be quite higher compared to hard disk drives. Reason being that when all other things being equal, SSD typically sell for about the same amount per GB across the line. For example, if a particular model of SSD is available in 128, and 256 GB capacities, each step up typically doubles the price. That’s because the vast bulk of the cost of an SSD is in the flash memory. Doubling capacity requires twice as much flash memory, and so doubles the price. In case of HDD however cost per GB turns our to be more economical than cost per MB.