Hard Disk Drives vs. Solid State Drives vs. Hybrid Drives
There are essentially two kinds of memory in a computer. Primary and secondary memory are the two types of memory. RAM, or primary memory, is temporary. However, secondary memory refers to storage disks and is permanent.
All computers require a storage device to hold their data, including operating systems, documents, images, and audio and video files. This data needs to be internally stored on a computer’s storage drive. Furthermore, these drives must be non-volatile, meaning that data will be retained even in the event of a power outage.
A computer can utilize a variety of internal storage drive types. These drives might be hybrid, solid-state, or magnetic hard drives.
Magnetic Hard Drives
Magnetic hard drives date back to the early days of computing. IBM first developed them in 1956, and despite their lengthy history, they are still in use today.
The actual data is kept on the magnetic disks within the sealed case that makes up the hard disk drive. Depending on what the user wants to accomplish, the actuator arm will either write data to or read data from the high-speed rotating disks as they rotate. These magnetic disks can have a rotational speed of 10,000, 7200, or 5400 RPM.
The modern desktop computer hard disk typically operates in the 7200 RPM range. The speed of a standard laptop hard drive is 5400 RPM, which is also the operating speed of a lower-cost desktop hard drive.
More expensive high end hard drives would run at 10,000 revolutions per minute. However, due to solid state drives’ superior speeds, these more expensive hard drives are no longer widely used.
Serial ATA is the interface used by hard drives presently. This faster standard now replaced the older parallel ATA interface. Therefore, data flows in a serial path — that is, one bit at a time — as opposed to a parallel path.
With an average transfer speed of six gigabits per second, SATA drives outperform the outdated parallel ATA technology. Additionally, there are two physical sizes for hard disks, i.e. 2.5 and 3.5 inches. Desktop computers and servers typically use 3.5-inch disks whereas laptops typically use 2.5-inch drives.
Solid State Drives
An SSD, or solid state drive, is a different kind of storage device. There are no moving parts on these drives, unlike magnetic drives. These drives store data on flash memory chips rather than magnetic disks. Thus, they have extremely quick data transfer rates.
Furthermore, since they don’t have any moving parts, they are more energy-efficient and quieter.
SSDs are available in many form factors as well. They would be available in two form factors: the more recent M.2 form factor or the conventional 2.5 inch rectangular form factor.
These two drives have different interfaces to connect to the motherboard, but they both store data on flash memory. Similar to a hard drive, a conventional 2.5-inch SSD is connected via the SATA interface, while an M.2 slot is needed to connect to the M.2 SSD.
SSDs are more resilient to physical shock than magnetic hard drives. This means that if you were to physically shock a hard drive — for example, by dropping it or violently shaking your computer — the magnetic drive would crash and your data might be destroyed.
Although SSDs cost more than hard drives, you definitely get what you pay for because of their significantly faster performance and you’ll notice a significant improvement in your computer’s performance. Additionally, they are compatible with desktop and laptop computers.
Because SSDs and hard drives differ in price, if you were to purchase a new computer, it’s possible that it would come with both a hard drive and an SSD drive.
The speedier SSD would be a smaller capacity drive that would hold any data — like the operating system, applications, and documents — that would benefit from speed and that you would access regularly. Furthermore, the slower hard drive would serve as secondary storage and have a bigger capacity. For instance, storing information that you might not access often. Alternatively, large files like videos would be stored on the drive.
The overall price of the computer would rise dramatically if you were to purchase or construct one with a single, large SSD serving as all of your storage. Furthermore, keeping things on an SSD that you hardly ever use is pointless. For this reason, computers will typically come with both an SSD and a hard drive, as a cost saving measure.
Solid State Hybrid Drives
Another option is to combine a hard drive and an SSD into a single physical drive rather than using two different ones. And these are referred to as solid state hybrid drives, or SSHDs.
These drives use flash memory in addition to magnetic disks. Hybrid drives combine the speed of an SSD with the huge capacity and low cost of magnetic disks.
Magnetic disks are used to store data on a hybrid drive, and flash memory is utilized to cache that data. Furthermore, these drives are essentially automated. The drive’s firmware will actually learn and make the decision on its own about where to store the data. Files that are often requested will be kept on the flash memory and cached.
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