SSD vs HDD Tested: What’s the Difference and Which Is Better?

[Admin]

Should you buy an HDD or SSD? Here's all you need to know.

SSD vs HDD Tested: What’s the Difference and Which Is Better? : Read more

 

[USAFRet]

Quibble here:

"Contrastingly, SSDs actually get faster as they get physically smaller. For the most part, 2.5-inch SATA SSDs weigh around 45-60g (0.1 pounds) and the latest M.2 SSDs, which are smaller and shaped like a stick of gum,weigh 6-9g (0.01-0.02 pounds). Again, this is worth noting if you’re seeking a lightweight device, particularly laptops. "


'M.2' is the form factor, not an indication of speed or performance.
For instance, the Samsung 860 EVO or Crucial MX500 can be had in either the 2.5" format or the M.2 format.
Identical performance, just a difference of how it plugs in.

An M.2 NVMe drive is where the theoretical performance increases.

 

[NiJoao]

All TLDRs in the world should be as good as this one.
Thank you!!

 

[nofanneeded]

TLDR ?

and dont bother to tell me what it means. in a respectful Article people dont use acronyms . be professional.

you DONT use acronyms in TITLES , Bad Journalism

 

[seanwebster]

Quibble here:

"Contrastingly, SSDs actually get faster as they get physically smaller. For the most part, 2.5-inch SATA SSDs weigh around 45-60g (0.1 pounds) and the latest M.2 SSDs, which are smaller and shaped like a stick of gum,weigh 6-9g (0.01-0.02 pounds). Again, this is worth noting if you’re seeking a lightweight device, particularly laptops. "


'M.2' is the form factor, not an indication of speed or performance.
For instance, the Samsung 860 EVO or Crucial MX500 can be had in either the 2.5" format or the M.2 format.
Identical performance, just a difference of how it plugs in.

An M.2 NVMe drive is where the theoretical performance increases.

Correct, communication protocol influences speed, but so does the physical connector - different keys are different speeds too. I stated what I stated for the general perspective, the current trend. Looking at HDDs, they are faster as they get bigger physically. Consumer SSDs, generally, tend to be faster as they get smaller, hence the NVMe M.2 ones. 2.5" SATA SSDs are bigger and slower. M.2 NVMe SSDs are the majority of the M.2 market while SATA M.2 is a minority.

 

[ozm8ey]

Though I also have SSD I have found that SSD's are more likely to get bsod issues/system failure

 

[USAFRet]

While SATA III M.2 drives may be in the minority, we need to be clear for our readers that being "M.2" is not the deciding factor in performance.
SATA III vs NVMe is.

From legitreview on the 500GB 860 EVO:
https://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-860-evo-500gb-sata-ssd-review_203759

"The only difference between the 2.5-inch model is that the 4K Random Read/Write speeds are 98k / 90k IOPS and the M.2 model comes in slightly slower at 97k/88k IOPS. In order to keep our charts simple we’ll only be benchmarking the 2.5-inch model."

 

[USAFRet]

Though I also have SSD I have found that SSD's are more likely to get bsod issues/system failure

I've not seen that AT ALL.

 

[NiJoao]

Though I also have SSD I have found that SSD's are more likely to get bsod issues/system failure

I recommend you exchange your Sata cable, or anything else between your motherboard and the SSD.
I've had multiple beefs with cables and enclosures.

 

[NiJoao]

TLDR ?

and dont bother to tell me what it means. in a respectful Article people dont use acronyms . be professional.

you DONT use acronyms in TITLES , Bad Journalism

In principle I agree, but in the author's defence, a TLDR is only a TLDR if it's written like that.
Also, if someone doesn't know what it is, it's because it's not targeted at them.

 

[hrudy]

For what it's worth,in my experience,any errors with SSDs have been catastrophic. I.E. total failure. HDDs may fail more gracefully. So there are a couple of take-aways.

1. backup early and often.
2. Only use name brand SSDs. I like vertically integrated SSDs , i.e. Samsung, Intel , and Crucial/Micron , probably in that order. Vertically oriented means one company makes the flash, controller and software. Most of my bad experience are with 3rd party SSDs , which means this party purchases flash and controllers and maybe writes the software.

 

[USAFRet]

For what it's worth,in my experience,any errors with SSDs have been catastrophic. I.E. total failure. HDDs may fail more gracefully. So there are a couple of take-aways.

I've had one die like that. SanDisk UltraII 960GB.
Poof, dead.
The nightly backup, of course, saved the 605GB data on it.

Then again, I had a WD Green HDD die in the space of 36 hours. Seemingly fine, then dead dead dead the next afternoon.

 

[mdd1963]

Though I also have SSD I have found that SSD's are more likely to get bsod issues/system failure

Perhaps you had some other underlying issue causing your BSODs, be it SATA data cabling, SATA ports on mainboard, RAM, or, an actual rare faulty SSD...

 

[nofanneeded]

In principle I agree, but in the author's defence, a TLDR is only a TLDR if it's written like that.
Also, if someone doesn't know what it is, it's because it's not targeted at them.

Big no , This is not like NATO , or RAM , TLDR is like a street langage between funny people in the PC thatis not a name of an entity ... just like IMO and other stuff , no one puts this a pargraph title in BOLD ALONE anywhere ! I Read Tomshardware since Thomas Pabst , and Toms hardware is not professional anymore and are allowing childich ways of writing.

Sorry Tomshardware is going down very quickly and the forums entries proves this.

 

[USAFRet]

Lets concentrate on the article, instead of writing style.

 

[kep55]

"Since HDDs have magnetic sectors and physical LBAs (logical block addressings, used for dictating the location of blocks of stored data) that can be tracked...". From unfortunate experience having magnetic sector physical LBAs is incredibly important if the data you're storing ever needs to be recovered. I had a Samsung 850 EVO that fried and I lost over 100 MB of data. I learned the hard way that NONE of the data could be recovered.

 

[USAFRet]

"Since HDDs have magnetic sectors and physical LBAs (logical block addressings, used for dictating the location of blocks of stored data) that can be tracked...". From unfortunate experience having magnetic sector physical LBAs is incredibly important if the data you're storing ever needs to be recovered. I had a Samsung 850 EVO that fried and I lost over 100 MB of data. I learned the hard way that NONE of the data could be recovered.

This is specifically what backups are for.
Data in more than one place and device.

SSD, HDD, DVD, whatever.
Dead is dead.

I had a 3TB HDD die...completely dead.
Backups saved the day.
I also had a 1TB SSD die. Completely dead.
Again, backups saved the day.

Don't rely on it being a spinning drive to die gracefully. Dead is dead.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Will windows XP really destroy an SSD over time?

 

[USAFRet]

Will windows XP really destroy an SSD over time?

Not because it is XP, but rather that XP does not know about TRIM.
And not 'destroy', but rather some cells may wear out faster, due to no TRIM.

 

[nofanneeded]

I hope that the cloud becomes very cheap one day so that we can use them for backup.

ANYTHING will be dead what ever you use , being Blue ray that can melt in high temps , or HDD that cant live more than 10 years .. and the old ways of tape backups that cant keep up with the large capacity and speed making them not suitable in 2019

 

[USAFRet]

I hope that the cloud becomes very cheap one day so that we can use them for backup.

"the cloud" is simply someone else's server.

 

[randomizer]

For what it's worth,in my experience,any errors with SSDs have been catastrophic. I.E. total failure. HDDs may fail more gracefully.

Does anyone remember 10-12 years ago we were all told that SSDs would just go into a readonly state? Has that happened to anyone? 🙄

 

[USAFRet]

Does anyone remember 10-12 years ago we were all told that SSDs would just go into a readonly state? Has that happened to anyone? 🙄

Similarly, has anyone approached the warranty TBW number in any regular consumer usage?
All 7 of my SSD's combined barely amount to 50TBW.

 

[cryoburner]

So how many TB of writes will you need? The average person will write 20-40GB per day browsing the web and performing daily office/student work tasks, and if you add that up, it's only about 10-15TB per year. However, if you’re a power user (such as a content creator) expect upwards of 100-200GB, which is still well within the warrantied rating of most good SSDs.

Those numbers seem abnormally high. I rather doubt the "average person" writes 20-40GB per day browsing the web and using office applications. What do they do, reinstall Windows every time they use their computer? : P

Most people probably don't average more than 10GB per day, or more than a few TB per year. Even those regularly downloading and installing large games to their SSD probably won't be doing so every-other day. Those seem more like they should be the "power user" numbers. And for the most part, the only people I could see writing "upwards of 100-200GB" per day to an SSD might be certain professional video editors and possibly some other niche use cases. Most other "content creators" and "power users" probably don't even hit that 20-40GB range. Of course, I'd be interested if there were some study showing otherwise, but I suspect those numbers were just made up. : P

Really, SSD write endurance shouldn't be much of a concern for just about anyone not doing something like heavy video editing on a daily basis. Pretty much any 500GB SSD, even the QLC models, should be rated for at least 100TBW of endurance, and the 1TB models should be at least double that, which I can't see being a problem within the usable life of most systems.

 

[USAFRet]

Those numbers seem abnormally high. I rather doubt the "average person" writes 20-40GB per day browsing the web and using office applications. What do they do, reinstall Windows every time they use their computer? : P

Yep, way too high.
I'd put myself solidly in the 'power user' realm.

Counting 6 drives in my system (the 660p in the PCIe adapter does not pass the relevant SMART data):
56.1TBW, in a cumulative 162,010 hours (6750 days, 18.5 years).
So, ~3.3TBW per year.

CAD, video. lots and lots of photo work...