HDD vs SSD: What Does the Future for Storage Hold?

What are SSDs?

Used in computers, A solid-state drive (SSD) is a new generation of storage device. By using flash-based memory which is notably faster, they replace traditional mechanical hard disks. Previous hard-disk storage technologies run slower, which often makes your computer run slower than it should. Owing to their low read-access times and fast throughputs, SSDs speed up computers significantly

What are HDDs?

A computer hard disk drive (HDD) is a non-volatile memory hardware device that controls the positioning, reading and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes data storage. In a computer, Hard disk drives are often used as the main storage device. HDDs can be found in desktop computers, consumer electronics, mobile devices, and enterprise storage arrays in data centers, and often store operating systems, software programs and other files.

In terms of the SSD’s advantages – they have much lower access times and latency. Apart from this, they are also smaller than an HDD, faster, quieter, last longer, use less power, and are not susceptible to vibration and magnetic fields.

Today’s typical online price for a 2.5” 512GB SSD is $140 to $170. The typical online price for a 3.5” 512 GB HDD is $44 to $65. This extra cost for the SSD in this case is worth it because – the SSD helps make the laptop lighter, enables it to be more resistant to the inevitable shocks and jolts it will experience in daily use, and adds of benefits of faster booting, faster waking from sleep, lower power use, and faster launching of applications and handling of big files.

Some of these SSD advantages, mainly speed, also will apply to a desktop computer, so desktops are increasingly outfitted with SSDs, particularly to hold the operating system, applications, and data that is accessed frequently. Replacing a boot drive with an SSD has become a popular upgrade option to breathe new life into a computer, especially one that seems to take forever to boot or is used for notoriously slow-loading applications such as Photoshop.

Data centers are an entirely different piece of business. The main concerns for data center storage include –

• Storage density
• Reliability
• Cost

Even though the SSDs are strong in terms of reliability and storage density, it is in terms of cost where they are not competitive yet.

Per Storage Pod and Vault, higher density drives provide greater storage. And reduces one’s overhead cost because of lower total power requirements and through less required maintenance. Comparable SSDs in those sizes would cost roughly $1,000 per terabyte, considerably higher than the corresponding HDD

To conclude, SSDs are not yet in the price range to make their use economical for the benefits they provide. For the near future, this is the reason why we expect to be using HDDs as our primary storage media.