Week6

Advantages of the solid-state drive vs HDD 

 

• Fast Boot Speed: comparing with traditional hard drive, SSD does not have such process that motor accelerate rotating. 

• Less time to read: SSD does not have Hards and can be quick to random read file. Some people have done a test: two computers under the same configuration, one computer shipped with HDD spent 31 seconds from start up to desktop appearing, however, the other one shipped with SSD only use 18 Secs in the entire process. 

• Fragment does not affect reading time: Because it is not relevant between seeking time and data storage place, therefore, disk fragment will not affect reading time. Faster to write: the writing speed of SSD based on DRAM is faster than HDD. 

• 0 decibel noise: there is no mechanical motor and fan, so, noise value is 0 decibel while working. 

• Lower heating: low-volume SSD based on flash storage will keep lower level on power consumption and heat release rate. 

• It will not happen mechanical malfunction: There is not any mechanical moving parts inside, so, it will not happen mechanical malfunction. Any collision, shock, vibration, even in the condition of rolling-over, the normal usage of SSD cannot be affected. 

• Woks in wider temperature range: typical hard disk only can work in the temperature range from 5 centigrade to 55 centigrade, however, most SSD will run normally from -10 ~ 70 ℃, even some industry SSD can work well from -40~85℃. 

• Small and light in weight: Low-volume SSD is smaller in size and lighter in weight than the same-volume traditional hard disk. But these strength gap will be fixed with capacity increasing. SSD is still lighter than common hard disk on weight until capacity is beyond 256GB. 

• Every coin has two sides, and there is no exception in SSD. Let us see what disadvantage of SSD. 

 

Disadvantages of the solid-state drive vs HDD 

 

• Excessive cost: price per unit capacity of SSD is 5 - 10 times that of traditional hard disk. So, making cost will multiply, and actual selling price must be higher. 

• Low volume: The biggest volume of SSD is far smaller than traditional hard disk. Based on test from IBM, 4TB hard drive disk has been tested. 

• Vulnerable to external influence: traditional hard disk is blocked in Faraday cage, hence, it can be immune to some bad influence, but SSD is opposite to this, and it is vulnerable to external influence, such as power failure, magnetic inference, static electricity, etc. 

• Limitation on writing lifespan: the lifespan of writing to flash memory is 10,000 times to 100,000 times, and tailor-made one will up to 1, 000,000 time to 5,000,000 times. 

• Data will be hard to recover once hardware was damaged, if storage device were traditional hard disk or tape storage, some data would be easy to recover. If it were SSD, data would be difficult to be restored. 

• Short battery life: PC shipped with SSD runs under idle and low-loading operation, its battery lifespan will be shorter than hard drive disk. 

• Higher power consumption: SSD based on DRAM will consume a vast number of powers. Even though computer is closed, it still needs supply power. If not, data will be lost. 

SSD vs. HDD: What is the difference 

 

The below table has recorded the general comparison between SSD and common HDD. 

SSD vs. HDD
Name	State Solid Drive	Hard Drive Disk
Volume	Less	Huge
Price	High	Low
Hard Disk Array	Easy	Very Difficult
Random Access	Extremely fast	Common
Writing frequency	SLC: 100,000 times  MLC: 10,000 times	No limited
Working Noise	No	Yes
Working Temperature	Adapt to low temp	Adapt to normal temp
Working Noise	No	Yes
Shockproof	Yes	No
Data Recovery	Hard	Easy
Shockproof	Yes	No
Quality	Light	Heavy