SSD vs. HDD: Advantages and Disadvantages of the Solid State Drive

It comes to SSD, namely solid state drive, those who care about IT products must be familar to it. We can learn something from its name, and it is not similar to traditional hard drive disk. Actually, SSD is a hard drive made by solid electronic storage chip array, but some aspects is coincidence with traditional hard disk, such as port standard, definition, function, usage method, product shape and size.

SSD vs. HDD: advantages of the solid state drive

• Fast Boot Speed: comparing with traditional hard drive, SSD doesn’t have such process that motor accelerate rotating.
• Less time to read: SSD doesn’t have hards, and can be quick to random read file. Some people have done a test: two computers under the same configuration, one computer shipped with HDD spent 31 seconds from start up to desktop appearing, however, the other one shipped with SSD only use 18 Secs in the whole process.
• Fragment doesn’t affect reading time: Due to the fact that it is not relevant between seeking time and data storage place, therefore, disk fragment won’t affect reading time. More fast to write: the writing speed of SSD based on DRAM is more fast than HDD.
• 0 decibel noise: there is no mechanical motor and fan, so, noise value is 0 decibel while working.
• Lower heating: low-volume SSD based on flash storage will keep lower level on power consumption and heat release rate.
• It won’t happen mechanical malfunction: There is no any mechanical moving parts inside, so, it won’t happen mechanical malfunction. Any collision, shock, vibration, even in the condition of rolling-over, the normal usage of SSD can’t be affected.
• Woks in wider temperature range: typical hard disk only can work in the temperature range from 5 centigrade to 55 centigrade, however, most SSD will run normally from -10 ~ 70 ℃, even some industry SSD can work well from -40~85℃ .
• Small in size and light in weight: Low-volume SSD is smaller in size and lighter in weight than the same-volume traditional hard disk. But, these strength gap will be fixed with capacity increasing. SSD is still lighter than common hard disk on weight until capacity is beyond 256GB.

Every coin has two sides, and there is no exception in SSD. Let’s see what disadvantage of SSD is?

SSD vs. HDD: disadvantages of the solid state drive

• High cost: price per unit capacity of SSD is 5 - 10 times that of traditional hard disk. So, making cost will multiply, and actual selling price must be higher.
• Low volume: The biggest volume of SSD is far smaller than traditional hard disk. Based on test from IBM, 4TB hard drive disk has been tested.
• Vulnerable to external influence: traditional hard disk is blocked in Faraday cage, hence, it can immune to some bad influence, but SSD is opposite to this, and it is vulnerable to external influence, such as power failure, magnetic inference, static electricity, etc.
• Limitation on writing lifespan: the lifespan of writing to flash memory is 10,000 times to 100,000 times, and tailor-made one will up to 1, 000,000 time to 5,000,000 times.
• Data will be hard to recover: once hardware was damaged, if storage device was traditional hard disk or tape storage, some data would be easy to recover. If it was SSD, data would be very difficult to be restored.
• Short battery life: PC shipped with SSD runs under idle and low-loading operation , its battery lifespan will be shorter than hard drive disk.
• Higher power consumption: SSD based on DRAM will consume a great number of power. Even though computer is closed, it still need supply power. If not, data will be lost.

SSD vs. HDD: What is the difference?

The below table has recorded the general comparison between SSD and common HDD, and it will make you understand intuitively.

SSD vs. HDD
Name	State Solid Drive	Hard Drive Disk
Volume	Less	Huge
Price	High	Low
Hard Disk Array	Easy	Very Difficult
Random Access	Very fast	Common
Writing frequency	SLC: 100,000 times MLC: 10,000 times	No limited
Working Noise	No	Yes
Working Temperature	Adapt to low temp	Adapt to normal temp
Working Noise	No	Yes
Shockproof	Yes	No
Data Recovery	Hard	Easy
Shockproof	Yes	No
Quality	Light	Heavy