On the whole, modern SSDs tend to last longer (average failure rate of 2.0 million hours) than modern HDDs (average failure rate of 1.5 million hours). It's your responsibility to research this on a per-model basis before making a purchase. Some models are prone to fail within 12 months, while others have average lifespans exceeding six years. Since HDDs have moving parts, wear and tear are expected over time-but not all HDDs wear at the same rate. As long as those speeds are within the SATA connector's max speed, which they most likely will be, you should be fine.įailure rate. Plus, most hard drives perform at similar levels these days, so don't worry too much about this particular detail.įor SSDs, look for sequential read and write speeds (also called sustained read and write speeds). While it's true that two 7200RPM drives could perform differently (e.g., one of them might be slower at re-positioning the disk reader), there's no standard way to compare access times. Traditional HDDs have a couple of other factors that impact performance, such as the time it takes for the reader to position itself to read data from or write data to the drive. Modern HDDs can have cache sizes ranging from 8MB to 256MB.Īccess times. When a hard disk needs to transfer data from one section of the drive to another, it utilizes a special area of embedded memory called the cache (or buffer).Ī larger cache enables the data to transfer faster because more information can be stored at one time. However, a 7200RPM drive will always be faster than a 5400RPM drive.Ĭache space. No HDD can transfer data at that kind of speed.
That first value is the SATA speed, which describes the theoretical maximum speed of a SATA connection. For example, a modern drive might be listed as 3.0GB/s and 7200RPM. Higher RPM means faster transfer of data to and from the drive. Transfer speeds. Many factors determine the performance of a consumer-grade HDD, but revolutions per minute (RPM) is an important one. SSDs can't hold as much space, and consumer-grade SSDs currently max out around 5-8TB per drive. HDDs come in a wide range of capacities, capping out at 18TB per drive due to physical limitations. Here's what to look for in a modern hard drive: Hard Drive Specifications and Performance Note: Not sure what SATA, IDE, or USB mean? Check out our post on common computer cables.ģ. External drives, however, connect to your system through a USB port regardless of whether they're HDDs or SSDs. Older internal HDDs that were manufactured before the SATA standard use IDE connectors instead. What if you need to fit an SSD into a 3.5-inch enclosure? Some adapters let you turn 2.5-inch drives into 3.5-inch drives.Īs for connections, most modern internal drives (both HDD and SSD) use SATA connectors. As such, most SSDs come in the 2.5-inch form factor. SSDs don't have any moving parts, so they can be made smaller than HDDs. For this reason, desktop HDDs tend to be 3.5-inches with a maximum capacity of 10-20TB, while laptop HDDs tend to be 2.5-inches with a maximum capacity of 5-10TB (as of this writing). In HDDs, data is stored on spinning metal disks, which means that more disks are needed for greater data capacity.
Thankfully, there are only two "real" choices, and your current setup mostly dictates the right choice.ĭata drives come in two form factors: the 3.5-inch drive and the 2.5-inch drive. Once you've decided between HDD and SSD, you have to pick a form factor. Looking for recommendations? You can't go wrong with the Seagate BarraCuda 4TB 3.5-inch Internal HDD or the Samsung 870 EVO 1TB 2.5-inch Internal SSD. Speed and performance are the primary benefits of an SSD over an HDD. If the drive is going to run an operating system or hold a lot of frequently accessed files and programs, then go with an SSD instead. If you're buying the drive mainly for data backups and long-term data storage, go with a traditional HDD. If money is a limiting factor and you need as much storage space as you can get, go with a traditional HDD. SSDs are more expensive per gigabyte, meaning they have smaller data capacities than HDDs at any given price point. SSDs have no moving parts, so they make no noise and have longer lifespans. SSDs draw less power, which conserves energy and extends laptop battery life.
Think of an SSD like a massive USB flash drive or SD card. While SSDs serve the same general function as traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), they have a few pros and cons.Īn SSD is a type of data drive that uses flash memory instead of the spinning metal disks found in traditional HDDs. The first consideration when deciding to buy a data storage drive is whether you need a solid-state drive (SSD).