Hard Drives

If you are currently looking to purchase a replacement hard drive for your computer you have two distinct choices. To begin with there is the now customary hard disk drive, and these have been around for a number of years now, however, there is now a new type of hard drive in existence, and it is called a solid state drive (SSD). You may not think that there is much difference between the two drives, and from the outside there isn’t. However, go under the hood, and it is a different matter and they both store data in an entirely different way.

Hard disk drives have a lot of moving parts, and this is their distinct disadvantage, as many things can go wrong with them, resulting in a loss of data that can be catastrophic. With a solid state drive, there are no moving parts, so there is much less chance of data being lost or corrupted. Instead of moving parts, it works along similar lines to those little USB drives that plug into your computer. The data is stored on memory chips, and there is no chance of data being lost if the drive comes into contact with magnets or strong magnetic fields.

Despite the fact that solid state drives are much more efficient and less prone to data loss, hard drives are still the more common out of the two, and this is mainly due to the cost. Solid ones are much more expensive to produce, however, costs are falling, and it should not be too long before more computers come with SSD’s already in place.

Another reason why solid state drives are better at storing data, simply put, it’s the fact that they are less prone to damage whilst being moved around. That is very important. Due to the many moving parts inside it’s is not uncommon for the read and write heads to come into contact with the disk used to store the data. This damage can also cause data loss and corruption, dust is another enemy of the hard disk drive, as it can clog up the interior mechanism.

Speedy Access to Data

One final yet crucial benefit that solid state drives have over hard disk drives is the speed with which they access the stored data, which is something that happens three to four times as fast with a SSD than a hard disk drive.