We often talk about the much faster speeds of SSDs, their increasingly affordable price tag, and the many other benefits of SSDs. But if they are so good, then why haven’t these drives replaced conventional hard drives yet? The thing is that HDD also has its advantages. And the benefits are very significant. We will tell you about them today. You can also have both of them on the same PC.
1. HDD is still much cheaper than SSD
Solid state drives have always cost much more than hard drives of the same size. Although, over time the difference in price between them became less and less, and the SSD itself has long ceased to be a luxury, you can still save money when buying an HDD. And save quite a lot.
For example, a 1TB WD Blue hard drive currently costs about $4,500, while a 1TB SSD from the same series will set you back $13,000. The difference, as they say, is obvious.
2. HDD offer much more storage capacity
If you need a drive for several tens of terabytes, then you simply cannot do without a hard drive. Even today, consumer SSDs are very limited in their capacity, and you simply won’t find a 10 or 20 TB drive like this.
No, of course, high-capacity SSDs do exist. But almost all of them are designed for corporate users, use the U.2 server connector and cost like a Boeing wing. For example, how do you like the 12.7 TB Micron U.2 SSD for $4800? A 30TB SSD from Samsung for $20,000?
In the case of HDD, there is no such problem in principle. For example, a 18 TB WD Gold hard drive costs about $31,000.
3. HDDs are better suited for archiving and long-term data storage
Hard disk non-volatile memory is best suited for the long-term storage of information. You can safely write data to the HDD, disconnect it from the PC and put it on the shelf for years to come. Try this trick with an SSD, and in a few years, you will have to face the harsh reality. There will be no information left on the solid state drive.
Research by JEDEC’s Alvin Cox confirms that under ideal conditions, solid state drives can store information for about 105 weeks, or just a couple of years. And in some cases, they begin to lose it as early as a week after the power is turned off.
4. Ability to recover data after a failure
If, in the event of a hard drive failure, it remains possible to recover lost data on your own or with the help of specialists who will directly read them from HDD pancakes, then in the case of an SSD, you can face a real disaster. Well, users of solid-state drives with TRIM or data encryption will have the worst.
It’s all about the completely different principles of recording HDD and SSD. Unlike conventional hard drives with relatively sequential data writes, SSDs write data in blocks that can reside on different memory chips. And on one chip, there can be no question of any linear recording.Â
In this case, information is constantly overwritten, transferred from one memory cell to another, and when executing the TRIM command, it can even be permanently deleted. If we talk about HDD, then they delete information only when it is overwritten.
5. HDD failure will not come as a surprise
In most cases, the “death” of a hard drive is preceded by:
- all sorts of knocks,
- whistles and squeaks,
- computer freezes,
- unnaturally slow operation when the PC accesses the problematic drive.
A solid state drive has no such features. It dies quietly and quickly, and you can only find out how much more it will last by constantly monitoring the reports of proprietary software or utilities such as Crystal Disk Mark. But only a few do this, so in most cases, the death of an SSD will come as a complete surprise to you, and the information stored on it will be instantly lost.Â
