Advantages and Disadvantages of Solid State Drive vs Hard Drive

Within the past several years, Solid State Disk Drives have become a popular alternative to the standard hard drive. They are completely silent, less prone to mechanical malfunction and are able to write and rewrite data at more than 50 times the speed of the standard hard drive.

For those considering a switch from a standard hard drive to an SSD, there are several advantages and disadvantages for you to consider:

Advantages to Using a Solid State Hard Disk

• The speed of an SSD is not constrained by its parts, because there are no moving parts to a Solid State Drive.
• Only a series of wires that moves at the speed of electricity.
• Many SSD require lower power and produce less heat, resulting in a decrease in electrical usage and a longer lifespan, especially in laptops that are prone to overheating.
• Because there is no disk to spin, a Solid State Disk Drive can start up over 25 times faster than the standard hard drive.
• There is no noise, except in the case of the higher capacity storage spaces that tend to have cooling fans attached.
• Both flash and DRAM Solid State Drives run at faster speeds than hard drives and continue to run at those speeds regardless of the amount of data being accessed.
• Any physical occurrences, such as vibration, high movements or temperature fluctuations, do not affect SSDs to the same degree because there are no moving parts to break.

Disadvantages to Using a Solid State Hard Disk

• The Solid State Disk price per gigabyte is much higher than hard drives, so an upgrade to the same GB capacity can incur some considerable costs.
• While they are able to withstand movement, they are vulnerable to power loss and electrical/magnetic currents much in the same way as flash cards.
• Currently there are very few large capacity SSD models, though this is expected to change drastically over the course of the next few years.
• Flash SSD have limited write cycles. It is estimated that these write cycles will last until long after the computer is still being used, it is possible that some files could use write cycles often enough that it affects the owner/user.
• Despite requiring less power, many SSD still use more power than the standard hard drive, especially when idle. This can cause laptop batteries to use up more quickly.

Solid State Drives have a variety of benefits, especially for businesses and those that use their laptops regularly. Still, SSD are not for everyone, and some people may still prefer to use the standard hard drive until the capacity, power usage and write cycle lifespan has increase on the available Solid State Hard Disks. It is estimated, however, that these changes will occur sooner rather than later.