Hard Disk Drive or Solid State Drive?

[InMooseWeTrust]

What does everyone here use on their primary (most used) computer?

A hard drive is the standard run of the mill internal storage drive. An SSD is a new, fast, expensive (and overall better) memory drive that's not really a hard drive, but your computer thinks it's a hard drive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

I bought an SSD about this time last year, after destroying at least four hard drives on my primary laptop in less than 2 years. Those hard drives were destroyed because I was using my laptop pretty heavily and moving a lot of big files (and torrenting), and they just dropped dead one after another.

I decided enough was enough. Even though I had another hard drive to spare (I fix computers so I have a lot of salvage parts), I was done. So I bought my first SSD (Crucial M4 128 GB for $86 on eBay). I put it in my laptop and clean installed Windows 7. After the final restart, it booted up in a few seconds. I was amazed. So I spent the rest of the day installing stuff and noticed there was no lag, and files were moving around very quickly.

I downloaded some torrents, and again, everything was fast and efficient. Vuze used to slow my hard drive down a lot, but here it wasn't affecting my computer.

Now, I have a lot of stuff installed and my laptop is still heavily used. There's only about 20 GB of space free in the SSD (I use external hard drives for big storage). If I restart my computer, it shuts down in about 5 seconds, and boots up in about 10 seconds. On Windows 7.

I'm never going back.


Oh, and downloading torrents on SSDs is safe. You won't ruin your drive, and even with heavy use, your SSD will run well for 3-4 years anyway. Don't let anybody tell you it wears out faster, because it doesn't. Your hard drive will die before your SSD dies.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

HDD for me.
I plan to use SSD for OS sometimes in the future but I don't even want to think how quick would W8 take to boot xD

 

[InMooseWeTrust]

HDD for me.
I plan to use SSD for OS sometimes in the future but I don't even want to think how quick would W8 take to boot xD

It boots up in only a few seconds. I've seen a few Windows 8 computers with SSD. And it gets even more exciting when your computer doesn't lag.

And then I tried booting up Ubuntu...

 

[Legendary Silke]

Seeing as I'm still using a laptop with a single drive bay, and I'm not giving up on optical discs just yet (that, and manually ripping it out would mean a gaping hole in my laptop), I went hybrid last December.

I don't regret that purchase :3 (You see, even 8 GB is probably enough for most people's boot and application loads.)

 

[Mittens95]

Seeing as I'm still using a laptop with a single drive bay, and I'm not giving up on optical discs just yet (that, and manually ripping it out would mean a gaping hole in my laptop), I went hybrid last December.

I don't regret that purchase :3 (You see, even 8 GB is probably enough for most people's boot and application loads.)

I have a laptop with a 24 gb solid state drive and a 750 gb hard drive. And when I installed windows 7 alone on the SSD the whole disk was full after some updates. So I began using Windows on my HDD with the 24 gb SSD as a cache drive.

If I had to choose one of the two, it would be the HDD. Because I already have a large hard drive, I use it for hoarding TV Shows from torrents since I don't have netflix. I see that for alot of people a 64-128 gb SSD would be more relevant for them than a humongous HDD since your average computer user streams all their media from online sources (spotify, netflix, hulu, etc) and stores their documents on the cloud.

A big HDD is good if you are a content creator, a gamer or if you are like me who likes to hoard media.

 

[Morkula]

I just recently (about a month or two ago) installed a 250GB SSD on my desktop (using my old 1TB HDD for a storage drive). At first I was a bit skeptical about doing it, since I was thinking "Am I really that impatient that I'm going to spend money to buy something that's basically just going to make me boot a few seconds faster?" But holy crap. Everything loads so much faster now and my computer is so much snappier. Booting, updating Windows, installing stuff, starting up multiple programs at once, loading games...everything is just lightning fast. It's one of the best upgrades I've ever done.

 

[Sheep]

I can't see myself ever going back to HDD. Got my current MacBook Pro laptop less than a year ago with 510GB SSD and the improvement, especially considering that I switched over from a very poor Inspiron 1525, was massive. Everything boots within seconds and I couldn't be more satisfied.

 

[Razgriz]

SSD all the way, I use it with my macbook and I can't see why someone wouldn't like it! It's fast, consumes less and makes less noise. Yup.

 

[Omicron]

I'm currently using HDD's. But they are over 6 years now and want to replace them as soon as possible, before they die on me. My PC is custom built and both HDD's are the only parts that have not been upgraded along with my monitor and speakers. The replacement is long overdue and I'm hoping to replace them in less than a month. I will buy a 250GB SSD for the OS and applications and an HDD for storage.

 

[Legendary Silke]

I'm still personally waiting for 1 TB SSDs to become relatively affordable since I have too much data for most SSDs to comfortably fit.

 

[Tsutarja]

I have no experience with SSDs yet, so I had to go for HDD in this one. I want to try SSDs sooner or later, but I'm lacking on the financial side :p

I'm surprised my new laptop didn't come with an SSD, or even an SSHD. I would have expected it to come with one of those instead of an HDD considering how much I payed for it.

 

[Sylphiel]

As much as I would love an SSD because I keep hearing about all those fast load times and I'm actually kind of jealous...

I'm also kind of cheap. So HDD it is for me now, until I can justify buying an SSD. :( I'm operating under the premise of "the HDD is fine for now, I have no need to rush out and buy something else", so yeah.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

It boots up in only a few seconds.

That's it =D The default W8 boots in 5 secs or so so with SSD, it could even skip the boot screen xD
That's why I don't even want to think how quick would that be =D

 

[InMooseWeTrust]

I'm still personally waiting for 1 TB SSDs to become relatively affordable since I have too much data for most SSDs to comfortably fit.

Buy an SSD with around 250GB of storage. As soon as you're done downloading torrents or making videos, move them to your external hard drive (which are dirt cheap now). I have a 2 TB and a 3 TB hard drives and use them for long-term storage of big files. They work best when I don't use them all the time.

Hard drives work best when you store large files for long term. Constant use with small files will just wear them out, and your computer makes tons of small files.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Buy an SSD with around 250GB of storage. As soon as you're done downloading torrents or making videos, move them to your external hard drive (which are dirt cheap now). I have a 2 TB and a 3 TB hard drives and use them for long-term storage of big files. They work best when I don't use them all the time.

Hard drives work best when you store large files for long term. Constant use with small files will just wear them out, and your computer makes tons of small files.

I'd agree with you, but I'd prefer having at least two copies of almost everything important to me. I do already have a 1 TB portable external disk drive, and I tend to use it for backing things up, including system images.

Hard disk drives don't exactly "wear out" in your sense - yes, hard disk drives are very slow when attempting to perform random reads or writes, but as far as things are concerned, it's still a normal day in a HDD's operation.

I'm not even too firm on storage device reliability. SSD or HDD, they're both not the most reliable pieces of tech anyway. A good backup regimen is better to be honest.

 

[Puddle]

I just use a Hard drive since it's what already comes with it. However, when I'm older, I might customize it and add an SSD.

 

[pokemasta92]

I have a 600GB HDD and it's enough for me. I'm well aware of the advantages of an SDD, but they are more expensive and the laptop I liked at the store had an HDD and I was fine with that. I can't remember any big downloads I've done, I don't do any torrenting (not exactly sure what that is), and I don't make videos. All I do is check my email/social media, look at a few forums, watch YouTube/Netflix, download a few new songs a year that I like, add a few pictures, and play the 10 or so PC games that were mostly on disc, a few from Steam, that I installed a long time ago. The only thing that uses my hard drive the most is when I save a game, which is barely nothing. I don't see my HDD failing anytime soon. I've heard with my use it can last for up to 10 years maybe longer. I also don't have any backup hard drive because it's not really necessary for me. I don't do a lot of the things you guys do. I have all of my pictures, Microsoft Word/PowerPoint/Excel/OneNote documents, and saved games backed up on a couple different cloud sites. I'm fine.

 

[Zen-senpai]

I don't see much of a difference between using an SSD on my laptop vs an HDD on my desktop. Maybe there would be a difference in gaming but my laptop has an integrated card so I can't really test :/ I'd have to say HDD unless I had the money to buy an SSD with the storage option I need.

 

[Cherrim]

I have an SSD and two HDDs in my desktop, although admittedly that hasn't really been my main computer for a while because my laptop is so much more convenient. :( My laptop doesn't have an SSD. I'd like to switch one in but if I spend any more money on this thing it'd be to replace the battery so... priorities.

I love the SSD in my desktop, though. It's so nice not having to wait for anything and I got mine fairly cheap back when they were a lot more expensive than they are now, so I'm glad I've never regretted the purchase. It's not very big (120GB, iirc) so I keep most of my data/downloads/etc on the hard disks, but I'm still very pleased with it.

I just recently (about a month or two ago) installed a 250GB SSD on my desktop (using my old 1TB HDD for a storage drive). At first I was a bit skeptical about doing it, since I was thinking "Am I really that impatient that I'm going to spend money to buy something that's basically just going to make me boot a few seconds faster?" But holy crap. Everything loads so much faster now and my computer is so much snappier. Booting, updating Windows, installing stuff, starting up multiple programs at once, loading games...everything is just lightning fast. It's one of the best upgrades I've ever done.

I love how by the time you finally got it I'd given up on convincing you because you'd been asking me on and off whether to upgrade for over a year. So here's my big "I TOLD YOU SO."