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How to choose a drive for a laptop, which is better: SSD drive or HDD (hard drive)

User question

Hello.

I have already contacted you about the noise of the hard disk. In general, I could not remove the noise, and decided to buy a new disc. I'm thinking about an SSD, can you tell me which one to stop? Or you can choose a silent HDD (otherwise there is less space on an SSD for the same money).

Good time everyone!

Well, first you need to decide on your tasks and priorities. For example, which is more important: noise or price? The speed of work or the amount of free space?

In the article I will try to give the most necessary points that will come in handy when choosing a drive for a laptop. So to speak, I will try to draw a parallel in the article, compare, different drives, their pros and cons in each case (it will be useful for those who want to buy a new disk). Nevertheless, the choice itself, after all, is up to you 👌 ...

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Choosing a laptop drive

Types of storage

In modern laptops, there are several types of drives (sometimes 2 are installed at once, for example, under the system - SSD, under documents - HDD). A little more about them below.

HDD (classic hard drive).

HDD

The most common discs today. All information on such a medium is contained on magnetic disks (plates) located in a sealed case. The magnetic head, quickly moving through them, reads and writes information (by the way, it is because of it that there is a slight grinding and noise when the HDD is working).

Currently, HDDs are outperforming SSDs in terms of speed, but they are much cheaper than them. Therefore, most often they resort to combined use: for Windows you can buy a small SSD drive for 60-100 GB, and for the rest of the HDD for 1-2 TB.

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SSD (Solid State Drive).

SSD drive

An SSD drive is (to put it very roughly) a "big" flash drive, so it has no moving parts (which means there is no noise, rattling, they do not heat up so much, and are less afraid of shock or shock).

However, they have a serious drawback: their cost is several times higher (at least for now)! In addition, their resource of use is limited: you can write / erase only a certain number of Gigabytes ...

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👉 To help!

Comparison of SSD and HDD in the speed of work and in a number of characteristics I gave here, I recommend that you familiarize yourself!

SSHD (Hybrid Hard Drive).

This drive is a magnetic hard disk in which a small solid-state drive is integrated.

All data is stored, as on a hard disk - on magnetic plates, but frequently used information is loaded into specials. an area (in cache memory, a kind of small SSD) for faster access to it. All this works in automatic mode, therefore, no complicated settings or "body movements" are required from the user.

SSHD is intended to be something in between SSD and HDD, providing high speed, coupled with a large amount of data. But personally, I have a negative attitude towards them: firstly, they are inferior to SSDs in speed, and not much outperform HDDs; secondly, the amount of cache memory in them is usually 8 GB ÷ 32 GB - which is clearly not enough for all the data to which fast access is required.

Dimensions of disks

Laptops use 2.5 "disks (usually abbreviated as 2.5"), PCs use 3.5 "(3.5" is noticeably more than 2.5 "). A comparison of dimensions is shown in the screenshot below.

Comparison of dimensions of 2.5 "and 3.5" drives

Here you need to pay attention to one important point - 2.5 "disks can be different: one thickness 9.5 mm and the other 5 mm (7 mm are also popular).

Usually, in thin ultrabooks there are 7 mm discs (sometimes 5 mm), in ordinary laptops - either 7 mm or 9.5 mm. If a 7 mm disk (most likely) fits into both of these laptops, then a 9.5 mm disk will not fit into a thin ultrabook.

HDD thickness 7mm and 9.5mm

Therefore, before buying a new drive (it does not matter, HDD or SSD) - measure the thickness of your old drive!

ADDITION!

By the way, about the dimensions, it is also worth noting that SSD M2 drives are now beginning to gain popularity. They are a small shawl, 22 mm wide and 40 to 80 mm long. You can learn more about them from this article: //ocomp.info/ssd-m2-kak-vyibrat-nakopitel.html

Samsung NVMe SSD - what a M2 SSD looks like

Operation speed and connection interface

Disk speed depends on many factors. One of the main ones is connection interface disk to mat. board.

In general, modern laptops usually have SATA III connectors (bandwidth up to 6 Gb / s). In laptops released several years ago, SATA II is often found (SATA II and SATA III are interchangeable, i.e. you can connect a disk from one connector to another, and everything will work (only the speed of work will decrease)).

SATA III and IDE - a comparison example

Older laptops have a different interface - IDE. Today it is outdated and loses to SATA in all speed characteristics. But nevertheless, when choosing a disk - pay attention to this, if you have an old laptop, it is possible that you have an IDE interface ...

Before buying a new disk, be sure to check what kind of connection interface you have.

The size of the memory buffer (cache).

This memory is necessary for the HDD to store frequently used information in a "separate" place so as not to disturb the magnetic plates once again. Naturally, access and reading speed from it is higher than from magnetic plates. Especially, the cache size is noticeable when working with small files. Modern hard drives are available with cache sizes ranging from 8 to 128 MB. It is preferable that the cache in the disk is larger ...

Spindle rotation speed.

This characteristic also applies directly to HDD disks. The higher the rotation speed, the higher the read speed from writing to disk. This parameter is measured in the number of revolutions per minute (in English, just put a few letters, for example, 7200 RPM).

However, the higher the RPM, the hotter the disk gets. Disks with 10,000 RPM are usually not installed without additional coolers for cooling (in laptops, usually, drives with 5400 RPM are installed - they do not heat up so much (you can use them without coolers), providing an acceptable access speed).

By the way, 5400 RPM drives tend to run quieter than 7200 RPM drives, last longer, and heat up less. If you are choosing a laptop drive, I would recommend sticking with 5400 RPM drives.

As for the speed of work, the same drives with 5400 RPM can provide data exchange rates up to 100-110 MB / s (which will be quite enough for the operation of Windows OS and for other games and programs).

As for the SSD drive ...

When choosing an SSD, pay attention to the read / write speed. Unlike HDDs, the characteristics of an SSD drive always indicate the maximum read and write speed (see example below). But, I would like to emphasize that the indicated speed does not always correspond to the data in practice ...

SSD drive - the main thing to look for: thickness, read / write speed, interface (SATA 6Gb / s is SATA III (SATA 3Gb / s is SATA II))

Volume

The more - the better, this rule still works for disks. For some reason, there is never a lot of space, sooner or later it ends.

True, the more space, the more expensive the disk, especially if we are talking about SSD (there is one more unpleasant detail: new disks with a large volume (using technologies not "run in" to the end) are less reliable, and more often fail) ...

100-300 GB - now this volume is only suitable for an office PC: for Windows, documents, etc. this is enough, but you will have to forget about many other things ... (or use cloud disks).

500-2000 GB - the most common hard drive size in a modern laptop. Allows, in principle, to store dozens of movies, games, documents, photos and everything that most users need. At the moment, one of the most versatile options.

> 2000 GB - now there are more than 2000 GB disks on sale, but I want to emphasize right away that they have some problems with reliability ...

If you need more than 2000 GB of disk on your laptop, I recommend installing 2 2 TB disks (1 TB = 1000 GB). This can be done if, instead of a CD / DVD drive, you install a special slot for installing another disc (you can buy such a slot in some Chinese store). By the way, some laptops have specially 2 slots for installing hard drives.

Other important characteristics

Noise during operation.

Any mechanical device makes noise during operation (yes, it can be almost inaudible, but it is). Therefore, in this regard, SSD will outperform HDD (even despite the fact that now there are HDDs that operate with 15 dB of noise - this is practically silent, for example, a whisper - about 25 dB).

Drive volume.

So far, HDDs are winning here over SSDs. Judge for yourself, now there are 1.2, 3 and even 4 TB HDD disks on sale, while SSDs at an affordable price from 60 to 512 GB, larger disks are no longer decently expensive ...

Read and write speed.

SSD drives outperform HDD drives in this capacity. For example, an HDD drive with 5400 RPM provides an average read speed of about 100-110 MB / s, and an "average" SSD drive connected to the same SATA III port can provide speeds of up to 550 MB / s.

Impact resistance (shaking, shocks, etc.).

A laptop is still a portable device, which means it is possible that sometimes it will be subject to shocks, vibrations, etc. In HDD disks, the read head is located very close to the platters, and it is highly undesirable for any vibrations to be observed during operation (if they happen, the appearance of bad is not excluded).

In this regard, SSD drives outperform HDDs by an order of magnitude - they are more shock-resistant, tk. there are no mechanical moving parts in them (although, against a crowbar - there is no reception ☺, if you hit hard, you can break both discs).

Usage cycle // disk uptime

In an SSD disk, the lifespan depends on the number of rewriting cycles (each disk manufacturer has its own limitation). Although this number for modern SSD drives is quite large, and yet, if you write and erase data from the drive by tens of Gigabytes every day, it is preferable to choose HDD. The hard drive is not limited in any way to write / rewrite cycles.

Although, today's "average" 240 GB SSD can write about 80,000 GB before it gets "screwed up". If you write 20-30 GB per day on average, then it will be enough for you for 6-8 years! During this time, it will simply become obsolete morally ...

Heat dissipation.

If you have an HDD with a high RPM (7200 and higher), or if you have two HDDs close, then the disks start to warm up, and the temperature goes out of the optimal value. For their normal operation, an additional cooler is required (again, extra noise).

In this regard, SSD outperforms HDD ...

Energy consumption.

For a laptop, this is a very important characteristic, because how long your device will run on battery depends on power consumption. So, on average, after replacing the HDD with an SSD, the laptop works 10-15% longer! Obviously, the HDD mechanics require more power than the chips in the SSD.

The ability to recover data in case of breakdown.

If an SSD drive breaks down, then the chances of recovering information are very small (there are almost none). With HDD disks, there are chances: specialists can take your magnetic plates out of the disk case and read all the remaining information from them.

True, it is worth noting that the SSD disk, according to its technology, is designed in such a way that how max. the possible amount of information, it must continue to work: it will be possible to read everything from it, but nothing can be written down (that is, that something is wrong with the disk, you will find out right away and be able to make a backup). Therefore, SSDs do not "die" very often ...

Price.

The average volume of SSDs is 4-5 times more expensive than HDDs (unless, of course, you are concerned with large volumes - there the price of SSDs grows in some progression).

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That's all, additions in the comments are welcome ...

Good luck!

👣

First publication: 01/06/2018

Correction: 02/10/2020

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