The Hard Drive: The Important Differences Between HDD Storage Solutions and SSD Solutions

The traditional hard disk drive (HDD) is made up of a motorized head and readable platters that were the first hard drive component in the first computers. In addition to the traditional HDD, solid state drives (SDD) have become more popular but are often much more expensive. There are some main differences between the two types of drives, and each has its own advantage and disadvantage.

Hard Disk Drives Hard disk drives were a part of the first computers. The platters are magnetic and work with a head that moves back and forth, reading the data on the platters. The platters spin at variable rates, which have gotten faster as platter technology advanced. However, the speed of which these platters spin has been capped for several years. HDD storage is traditionally cheaper as well, and provides more storage space than an SSD.

Solid State Drives SSDs are newer solutions for disk storage. They differ from HDD storage solutions because they have no movable parts. SSDs instead rely on flash chips. This makes SSDs extremely fast and less volatile than HDDs. However, SSDs do not have the storage capacity to store terabytes of data like HDD storage. SSDs are good for gaming computers and data that you use often whereas HDDs are good for storage backups and large-capacity data needs. Typically, a good, well-made system uses both of these drives in an array. For the best solution, build servers that take advantage of both types of drives. Use SSDs for fast servers and the servers' applications. For instance, you can use an SSD to run database applications for fast response times. You then use HDDs as storage units. For instance, use HHDs to store the data for the database. HDDs are good for making backups and creating redundancy to avoid losing data. For small offices, HDD storage is usually sufficient, but when you need more power and faster performance, incorporate SSDs. Photo Credit: limaoscarjuliet via Compfight cc