Solid State Drives (SSD) are better than old-fashioned hard disk drives (HDDs) in many ways, and plummeting SSD prices have led to many PC builders forgetting about HDDs completely. But despite SSDs being a better option in most cases, there are still times you should consider the humble HDD.
Considering an HDD instead could save you money and get you a bit of extra space. So if your circumstances permit it, it’s a smart option. Those circumstances vary a bit, but there are definitely still situations where an HDD does a very adequate job and an SSD is a bit too much.
What's The Difference?
You Don't Need SSD Speed for Everything
You Can Save a Lot of Money
A Lot of the Problems Can be Mitigated
It's Potentially More Recoverable
There is a Middle Ground
So, Don't Forget About HDDs
What’s The Difference?
An SSD uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data. This data is usually stored as “flash data,” — so little blocks of information are written and erased electronically as needed and stored on silicon. Because of their construction, SSDs have no moving parts and tend to be lighter, faster, and more durable than many alternatives. There are a few different types of SSD, SATA, and PCIe NVMe. SATA SSDs tend to be cheaper and connect in a similar way to a traditional hard drive. PCIe NVMe SSDs usually go into a slot on the device’s motherboard, can be significantly faster, tend to be smaller, and are usually more expensive than SATA drives.
An HDD is one of those alternatives. The technology is a lot older, and data is written and rewritten on a spinning disk by a magnetic head. Hard disk drives are mechanical, and their moving parts have the potential to cause issues. There’s also something called a “head crash,” where the arm responsible for reading and writing on the hard disk strikes it. This is usually caused by some sort of external force or shock that occurs while the drive is in use—like if someone drops the drive while it’s reading or writing.
To complicate things further, there are a few kinds of HDD, and they tend to be categorized by speed. This relates to how fast the disk can spin, and as a result, how fast the PC can read or write on it. The higher the speed, the better the drive’s performance. You’ll find most modern HDDs are stated at 7,200 RPM or 5,400 RPM. For the purposes of this article, we’re assuming you’re looking at a 7,200 RPM HDD — which performs significantly better than the 5,400 RPM version.
You Don’t Need SSD Speed for Everything
It’s hard to argue against the speed benefits of SSDs, which can read and write data around five times faster than some of the better HDDs — but you don’t need that kind of speed for everything. Archiving, basically storing your photos and videos somewhere, is the obvious example here. You can select a block of time to transfer them to your HDD and then do other things while the files are making their way over. Alternatively, if you transfer this kind of file over in small batches, say once every week or two, the time difference is unlikely to impact you.
Similarly, while SSDs are great for gaming and can drop boot and load times significantly, you don’t need this sort of speed with every game. Older games work just fine on an HDD, so if you’re still obsessed with Oblivion or Fallout: New Vegas, you can save a few GB of precious SSD storage by dumping them on an HDD.
You Can Save a Lot of Money
A 1TB HDD can be less than half the price of an equivalent SSD, and as the storage goes up so do the savings. If you need 10TB or more of storage, you’re looking at far less than $200 if you go the HDD route. A 4TB SSD, on average, costs around twice that.
HDDs have a far higher upper limit too. There are many around, at accessible price points, that are measured in the tens of terabytes. Some very large SSDs exist, but these tend to be specialist items that cost more than a car. If you see a “too good to be true” SSD on sale, like a 16 TB drive on sale for $100, then what you’re actually looking at is a scam.
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