By Charles Miller
The holiday season is when some lucky computer users might find a new laptop under the tree on Christmas morning. When Santa shops for that new computer there are two acronyms he is likely to encounter. Hard Disk Drive (HDD), or Solid State Drive (SSD), or both almost always appear in the technical specifications of any new computer.
Spinning mechanical hard disk drives have been the standard of the computer industry for more than a half century. Over the years, they have shrunk from the size of a refrigerator to palm-size devices, while at the same time their speed and storage capacity have grown exponentially. Best of all, their price continues to shrink as well.
In the 21st century, the solid state drive has emerged to challenge the dominance of HDDs. SSDs have no moving parts and are many orders of magnitude faster than HDDs. They are also quite a bit more expensive per gigabyte.
An interesting dynamic here is that while the prices of SSDs have steadily fallen, SSDs have not been able to render old style mechanical HDDs obsolete. Every time the price of SSDs decreases, the price of HDDs invariably falls even more. The consequence of this is that the information technology world just cannot seem to entirely let go of the old technology because it continues to be so economical.
Though more expensive, SSDs are now standard in many new laptop computers because they are so much faster and more rugged than mechanical drives. A common misconception is that because SSDs have no moving parts that they should never wear out. This is absolutely not the case, in fact the older technology HDDs have much longer life expectancy. Solid state drives can last longer or shorter depending on several factors. Manufacturers rate their drives by three key factors: age of the drive, total terabytes written (TBW) over the lifetime of the drive, and drive writes per day (DWPD). The longevity of any SSD depends on the amount of data you write to it and how often you write to it. Currently, the accepted number is about 500 terabytes of data before the drive wears out and fails.
Mechanical HDDs almost always give some warning of impending failure. They get slow, get noisy, get hot, they start vibrating, or all of the above. Any of these warning signs can give alert users time to back up their data before a catastrophic failure. SSDs are the exact opposite. They work perfectly right up to the moment they fail catastrophically. Your user files—documents, pictures, and so forth, can sometimes be recovered from a failed HDD but best forget about that in the case of a failed SSD.
For users who give their laptop computer casual use, a solid state drive can last the life of the laptop. Heavy users need to be aware that their SSD is inexorably degrading every hour it is used, so they should plan to replace the drive every two or three years before it has a chance to fail.
Here is hoping that everyone has a very Merry Christmas and that Santa Claus leaves everybody some nice treaats under the treee.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 415 101 8528 or email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
