SSD and HDD are the
two storage components for the computers. When you're building or upgrading
your PC, and you get to the business of storage, what should you go for? Building
a PC can be hard enough before you get as far as thinking about what storage
you're going to have inside it. But when you do get there, it's one of the most
important parts of the build and a crucial thing to get right.
You can go for
a Solid State Drive (SSD) or a more traditional Hard Disk Drive
(HDD). There are merits to both, but what's going to be best for your build,
and your budget?
What's the difference between the two?
In its simplest
form, an SSD is flash storage and has no moving parts whatsoever. As a result,
they're smaller and take up less space in a PC case, in some cases even
mounting directly to the motherboard. SSD storage is much faster than its HDD
equivalent.
HDD storage is
made up of magnetic tape and has mechanical parts inside. They're larger than
SSDs and much slower to read and write.
Why use an SSD?
If you're
building a PC for any purpose, you're going to want speed. If you
only have HDD storage in your machine, then speed isn't something coming your
way. Windows will take longer to boot up, applications will take longer to
load, files will take longer to open and save.
The beauty of an
SSD is that this waiting time is dramatically reduced, even on cheaper drives,
when compared to HDD. Anything you load on it will perform actions much
quicker.
One of the best
uses for an SSD in a PC is as a boot drive. This means installing a small-ish
capacity drive on which your Windows 10 operating system will live and boot up
from every day. By doing this, your PC will boot up and be ready to go in a
flash. You can also put your most frequently used software on there for a
similar effect.
The lifespan of
an SSD isn't as lengthy as that of a HDD, but you can certainly use an SSD as
your only drive in a PC. Many laptops only have SSD storage, for example.
You're not looking at a short-term life, but compared to HDD storage it is
reduced. SSDs don't handle being written to as well over time, but a boot drive
wouldn't suffer this.
SSD prices have
come down a lot in recent times, too, with the price per gigabyte much lower
than it once was. Large capacity drives are still expensive, as are the highest
performing ones, but generally speaking, they're more affordable than ever.
Why use a HDD?
The best case
for HDD is mass storage. This type of drive is cheaper than SSD and
available in some quite massive sizes. Have a lot of games or media to keep on
your PC? No problem, you can get one or more drives over 1TB in size for a
fraction of the cost of their SSD equivalents.
PC cases usually
have space for more than one drive, meaning you can stack up as much mass
storage as you can stash and your budget will allow.
Price per
gigabyte is still much less than SSDs, and large capacity drives won't take all
your money.
An efficient system would have an SSD to boot Windows from and one
or more HDDs for mass storage.
Our ultimate
recommendation is to opt for a mixed system with HDD mass storage and
an SSD boot drive for your Windows 10 install. This way you'll get a
balance of price, performance, and space, and you'll have a well-rounded
machine for all occasions.
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