Hard drives (HDD) vs Solid state drives (SSD): Which one is right for you?

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Both hard drives and solid state drives are devices used for storing your data; such as photos, music and software. While they do the same thing, there are pros and cons for each one due to the nature in which they store data.

Hard Drives
The main advantage of a hard drive is storage capacity, you can often find a hard drive with a storage capacity of several terabytes (you can store roughly 200 movies on a terabyte hard drive). Inside each hard drive, is lots of spinning parts and it is the speed of these spinning parts that determine how quick your computer can open your files such as pictures, word documents and music.
However, as a hard drive fills up with data, files can become scattered across the hard drive. This can result in a sluggish feel to the device you are using.

Solid State Drives
Solid state drives are built for speed. They do this by storing the data on them using a motionless technology, meaning there are no moving parts. This means the data can be accessed almost instantly. They are also ideal for laptop users as HDDs can be easily damaged if you move your laptop while still powered on. They also use less power than traditional hard drives meaning your battery lasts a lot longer.
The downside to SSDs is the cost. They are a little more expensive compared to traditional hard drives. If you are not using all of your existing drive space, then seriously consider swapping it for an SSD. It is much faster compared to traditional drives, and you can use your existing hard drive, as a external drive, for backups, so it does not go to waste.

So which one should I choose?
The bottleneck on most computers comes from the hard drive, so if you are looking at speeding up and improving the performance of your computer, and have less than 200GB of data you want to keep, it’s worth upgrading to an SSD. However, if you have a lot of data and want to keep costs down, an HDD is perfectly fine.

Thinking about upgrading to an SSD drive?  Give me a call if you need assistance.  Of if there is anything I can do for you, just click on my contact page to contact me.

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