Solid State Drives (SSDs), Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) are storage devices designed to store, read, and write data in various applications. They are more robust and reliable devices that store data for extended periods. Read further to learn more about these versatile storage devices in detail.
Solid State Drives (SSDs)
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a non-volatile memory and storage device of computer hardware that stores data on instantly accessible memory chips without moving parts. These SSDs use integrated circuits for storage and are fast, small, quiet, consume less energy, and are durable devices.
Solid state drives are like memory card modules and operate by using electronic circuits for storage and retrieval of data. Data is stored in special "blocks," which can be entirely written only once. In order to keep the data contiguous and the response time shorter, a block must be deleted entirely and rewritten in another block.
Hard Disk Drives (HDDs)
A hard disk drive (HDD) is a non-volatile data storage device, just like memory card modules. HDDs have spinning platters to read and write data and are ideal for laptops and desktop computers. These hard drives are traditional storage devices, are less expensive, have more storage capacity, and data recovery is more accessible in case they are damaged.
Hard disk drives have disc-like objects called "platters," which store the data using an electrical charge. This electrical charge comes from the "read or write head" actuator arm, which is instructed by the software in the CPU and motherboard. The arm on each platter with magnetic heads spins and divides the charge into sectors (with subdivision), called bits that receive the charge. Ultimately, the charge is read, written, and translated into a 1s or 0s binary system.
The Main Difference Between Solid State Drives (SSDs) & Hard Disk Drives (HDDs)
The main differences between SSDs and HDDs are data access and storage. HDDs use mechanical spinning disks and a moving read/write head to access data, while SSDs use memory chips. SSDs are objectively superior; they are smaller, lighter, and access and transfer data faster. Furthermore, they are less prone to failure by drops and jolts as they do not have any moving parts.
Types of Solid State Drives (SSDs), Hard Disk Drives (HDDs)
SSDs have two different types:
- Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA).
- Peripheral Component Interconnect express, or Non-Volatile Memory express (PCIe/NVMe/PCIe-NVMe).
On the other hand, SAS- (Serial Attached SCSI) and SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) are the serial interfaces for connecting hard disk drives based on SCSI command sets.
