Question on Solid State Drives

[JesseBassett]

Hello all,
I am curious here. Is having a SSD better than using a Hard Disk Drive? If so why? If not, why not? I have one and have used it. Yes my pc is quicker, but that's about it. Care to tell me the benefits VS the downsides? Thanks

 

[jacks]

I think quicker is the main advantage. Also you don't have any moving parts and it is quieter, lighter and uses less energy. There maybe other advantages too, but they do cost more. I swapped out an old drive (that went bad) for a SSD in my laptop and the biggest advantage; like you said seems to be speed.

 

[Wookiee]

It's noticeably and ridiculously quicker. If you need to do a heap of things that aren't confined to one process where it doesn't matter (ie just opening a web browser and keeping just that open all day), then you won't see any real benefit.

If you're doing a heap of multitasking with different programs or loading large amounts of data (ie games) a HDD is a huge detriment. Even 10 years ago when I had an SSD die and temporarily went back I couldn't cope with the slowness.

That said, plenty of reasons to keep HDDs: NAS, servers that don't require fast R/W, etc. You can't get the same storage out of an SSD (without paying a butt tonne more money). We bought some new servers at work that have a pair of SSDs, and 6 HDDs; we keep VM boot drives on the SSDs and all other data on the HDDs.

 

[ewq1938]

They also are much cooler, so they help a lot in laptops which don't cool the CPU as well as desktops do. I have a laptop that can take two hard drives. I use a SSD for the operating system and a regular HD for data, pics, movies etc.

 

[MehGuy]

I have an SDD too. They're more expensive, but everything runs faster, and I suspect they are less prone to breaking down.

 

[Wookiee]

I suspect they are less prone to breaking down.

Well... not in the same way. They're more reliable than they were 10-15 years ago, for sure, but you can still get dodgy flash, and it too will eventually die with use. Unfortunately there tend to be fewer warning signs than a HDD where you can usually hear it in the lead-up to it actually dying.

 

[MehGuy]

Well... not in the same way. They're more reliable than they were 10-15 years ago, for sure, but you can still get dodgy flash, and it too will eventually die with use. Unfortunately there tend to be fewer warning signs than a HDD where you can usually hear it in the lead-up to it actually dying.

Yeah, but I imagine SDD on average tends to last longer?

 

[Daniel9v9]

I had my HDD, as well as my fan, fail on me last year, which was a real pain. It was a very high-end mini-PC, but the parts were so difficult to replace, I ended up upgrading and investing in a whole new PC. It's not super common for HDD to fail but it can happen. Now I've learnt the value of opting for SSD and a PC with parts that are more easily replaceable. I think if you can afford going for SSD, that's probably better as they're faster and more stable.

 

[Wookiee]

Yeah, but I imagine SDD on average tends to last longer?

In my experience: not necessarily. Just like HDDs there's a lot of factors to it failing or working. I've had SSDs fail without much provocation and relative use, and I've got a HDD that's over 10 years old still happily churning away with regular use.

More than anything, it really has to do with the parts that leave the factory and general use vs abuse. You get bad batches of both SSDs and HDDs, and on the flip-side you get some of both that last forever.

 

[ewq1938]

HDD's usually have a longer life span. SSD's can die in one day or can last years. They are fast but can die fast too. I never put anything important on a SSD and for a tech like myself having just an OS on one is not a big deal. OS installs are easy and fast

 

[JesseBassett]

Thanks everyone for the quick responses. I appreciate it!

 

[Wookiee]

Just as an after-thought: the current cost of a cheap (small) SSD is relatively close to regular HDDs anyway. Unless you need a lot more space, there's not really a reason to opt in for one in general, or get a HDD to supplement it.

 

[Sketcher]

SSDs do tend to get slower over time, as more writes occur. TRIM mitigates this noticeably but does not eliminate it. This is why you don't defrag an SSD.

Of course, they're crazy fast to begin with, so the trade-off is often worth it unless you need to be doing things that involve a ton of writes.

 

[hedrick]

HDD's usually have a longer life span. SSD's can die in one day or can last years. They are fast but can die fast too. I never put anything important on a SSD and for a tech like myself having just an OS on one is not a big deal. OS installs are easy and fast

You’re confusing two things. SSDs have a finite lifetime. But with recent models that should be long enough not to be an issue. However there are lousy SSDs. If a drive fails quickly, it’s not because of limited SSD life. It’s a bad drive. The limited life is caused by things that happen slowly over time. There are programs that will tell you how far along that curve your drive is. Fir Linux it’s smartctl, but I’m sure there are windows and Mac versions.

For normal PCs and laptops a good quality consumer SSD is fine. For certain types of research, IO rates are high enough that you need enterprise grade SSDs.

 

[adrianmonk]

Also when purchasing an SSD, always look at reviews from multiple sources. Some companies these days are using cheap controllers (on NVME SSDs) but not advertising that change. They send out samples with good controllers to major outlets, but then sell ones with poor controllers to the general public. Stick to companies like Samsung, Sandisk etc. Check video reviews of actual samples on Youtube.

 

[elytron]

So far I have had good luck with Samsung SSDs. I have like 5 of them. SATA and NVME with no failures and very fast. I agree with @adrianmonk Wise to read some reviews on the electronics we buy.

 

[adrianmonk]

A Linus Tech Tips video covering this.

 

[Dave Darling]

Yes, an SSD beats a mechanical drive hands-down, much faster and more reliable, SSDs rarely fail.

 

[hedrick]

Enterprise SSDs rarely fail. Consumer ones do all the time. At least for us.

 

[Wookiee]

Enterprise SSDs rarely fail. Consumer ones do all the time. At least for us.

Depends what you get (and whether or not it's a bad batch) and what happens with it. I've only ever had two SSDs die; one (SanDisk) was still while they were still relatively small and new, and one (Kingston) was a 24/7 running image management server that was subject to a lot of regular re-writes.