AIOs Laptops Workstations

SSD vs HDD: What do you Really Need for Better Computing?

by Sushant Singh November 17, 2020 0 comments

People who are in the market for buying laptops or desktops are torn between choosing the right storage options for their machine and the configuration that they should go for with their laptops or desktops. So why is there such a huge confusion among customers? If you go to any tech forum, you will be inundated with questions upon questions by different users asking if they should go for an SSD storage or HDD+SDD configuration.

Storage is an important aspect of any device, be it smartphones, laptops, desktops, mp3 players, or you name it. So, it makes sense for people to ask these questions regarding the purchase they are going to make. In order to understand what type of storage you will need in your laptop or desktop system, you first need to understand each storage option’s most common usage scenario.

Solid State Drive (SSD)

If you are in the market for a laptop then you probably have already seen many laptops that offer SSD or SSD+HDD storage. A solid-state drive is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. This gives SSD’s very fast read and write speed over the spindle HDD. But this high-speed storage does come at a cost. SSD drives are more expensive over the spindle HDD when it comes to price to storage ratio but for many users that hike is justifiable. This is especially true in the case of working professionals who buy business laptops like the HP 240S G7. Working professionals don’t need a ton of storage on their work laptop since most of them use cloud storage anyway. Many students as well who want a productivity-based laptop also go for SSD storage for their laptops.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

One of the most commonly used types of storage in laptops and desktops even today and for years before has been the Hard Disk Drive or HDD. An HDD is a data storage device that has spinning disks inside where data is stored magnetically. HDD is still one of the most commonly used storage in affordable laptops as they offer more storage capacity per dollar but HDD is slower as well when compared to SSD storage. That being said, for many users who are on a tight budget or need a ton of storage HDD is still the default choice. You can get an HDD drive that is 1 TB or go all the way to 14 TB depending on your usage. One thing to note here would be that HDD drives are not so slow that they are unusable. On the contrary, HDD storage offers a better bang for the buck compared to SSD storage when it comes to the price to storage. The only trade-off here would be a laptop or desktop that takes a few more seconds to boot up or open applications. OEM’s like HP actually give the option to users for adding an SSD storage in many of their laptops for consumers that are on a tight budget but may want to add an SSD later.

SSD+HDD Storage

This is by far one of the mostly commonly used storage configurations that you’ll see in gaming laptops, mobile workstations, or in gaming desktops. In this configuration, the user gets the best of both worlds. In this configuration, one of the most common usage scenarios would be installing the OS or Windows on the SSD Drive while keeping the HDD drive only for storage. This type of configuration is mostly preferred by content creators, gamers, and professionals. In this configuration, the HDD drive doesn’t have to handle running the OS itself making it perform faster than it usually would, and since the OS or Windows is on the SSD storage, the system boots up faster and applications open quicker as well. Again, OEM’s like HP offer this configuration in both their Gaming laptops like the OMEN series or the Pavilion Gaming series and also on their Zbook Mobile Workstations that is used by professionals who are running heavy workloads.

Check out https://store.hp.com/in-en/default/hp-business-offers for some good deals by HP.