Thursday, 7 May 2015

[THOUGHTS] SSD's - DOES IT WORTH THE PAIN?

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The traditional spinning hard drive (HDD) is the basic nonvolatile storage on a computer. That is, it doesn't "go away" like the data on the system memory when you turn the system off. Hard drives are essentially metal platters with a magnetic coating. That coating stores your data. A read/write head on an arm accesses the data while the platters are spinning in a hard drive enclosure.





An SSD does much the same job functionally (e.g., saving your data while the system is off, booting your system, etc.) as an HDD, but instead of a magnetic coating on top of platters, the data is stored on interconnected flash memory chips that retain the data even when there's no power present. The chips can either be permanently installed on the system's motherboard (like on some small laptops and ultrabooks), on a PCI/PCIe card (in some high-end workstations), or in a box that's sized, shaped, and wired to slot in for a laptop or desktop's hard drive (common on everything else). These flash memory chips differ from the flash memory in USB thumb drives in the type and speed of the memory. That's the subject of a totally separate technical treatise, but suffice it to say that the flash memory in SSDs is faster and more reliable than the flash memory in USB thumb drives. SSDs are consequently more expensive than USB thumb drives for the same capacities.






An SSD-equipped PC will boot in seconds, certainly under a minute. A hard drive requires time to speed up to operating specs, and will continue to be slower than an SSD during normal use. A PC or Mac with an SSD boots faster, launches apps faster, and has faster overall performance. Witness the higher PCMark benchmark scores on laptops and desktops with SSDs, plus the much higher scores and transfer times for external SSDs versus HDDs. Whether it's for fun, school, or business, the extra speed may be the difference between finishing on time or failing.


30% FASTER THAN NORMAL HDD'S



AttributeSSD (Solid State Drive)HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
Power Draw / Battery LifeLess power draw, averages 2 – 3 watts, resulting in 30+ minute battery boostMore power draw, averages 6 – 7 watts and therefore uses more battery
CostExpensive, roughly $0.10 per gigabyte (based on buying a 1TB drive)Only around $0.06 per gigabyte, very cheap (buying a 4TB model)
CapacityTypically not larger than 1TB for notebook size drives; 1TB max for desktopsTypically around 500GB and 2TB maximum for notebook size drives; 6TB max for desktops
Operating System Boot TimeAround 10-13 seconds average bootup timeAround 30-40 seconds average bootup time
NoiseThere are no moving parts and as such no soundAudible clicks and spinning can be heard

Vibration
No vibration as there are no moving partsThe spinning of the platters can sometimes result in vibration
Heat Produced
Lower power draw and no moving parts so little heat is produced
HDD doesn’t produce much heat, but it will have a measurable amount more heat than an SSD due to moving parts and higher power draw
Failure RateMean time between failure rate of 2.0 million hoursMean time between failure rate of 1.5 million hours
File Copy / Write SpeedGenerally above 200 MB/s and up to 550 MB/s for cutting edge drivesThe range can be anywhere from 50 – 120MB / s
EncryptionFull Disk Encryption (FDE) Supported on some modelsFull Disk Encryption (FDE) Supported on some models
File Opening SpeedUp to 30% faster than HDDSlower than SSD
Magnetism Affected?An SSD is safe from any effects of magnetismMagnets can erase data


NO!!!

IF YOU

  • Don’t want to spend much money
  • Don’t care too much about how fast a computer boots up or opens programs - then get a hard drive (HDD).   
YES!!


IF YOU
  • are willing to pay for faster performance
  • have a quotient for speed and performance
  • definitely if you are a geek 
BEST PRACTICE


  • buy a ssd for your boot device 
  • buy a hdd as your primary storage device






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