“Solid-state drives are superior in terms of speed, power consumption, size, and durability.
Stress Tests
BackBlaze is an online backup company.
BackBlaze spreads its usage between manufacturers and models, which also spreads the risks.
Patrick Lindenberg / Unsplash
It also means that it has a wide pool of makes and models from which to draw its data.
The Annualized Failure Rate for 2020 was 50% lees, compared to 2019.
This improvement was seen both in newly added drives, and in older drives that are still in use.
Markus Spiske / Unsplash
Capacity and Price
There are two reasons you might want to buy HDDs in 2021.
Capacity, and price.
Hard drives are still way cheaper per gigabyte than SSDs.
Thats the internal kind, not the portable kind with a USB connector.
For comparison, a 4TB HDD can be had for $60-$70.
And if you head away from Amazon, you’ve got the option to get them even cheaper.
Solid-state drives are superior in terms of speed, power consumption, size, and durability.
On the other hand, they are way more expensive…
Thats the low end.
If you want a big drive, good luck.
An 8TB internal SSD from Sabrent will cost you $1,500.
The problem with HDDs is that theyre slow and noisy.
There are spinning disks inside, and their motors create noise.
So, for backups, or for anything that doesnt require speed, use an HDD.
And for the very fastest performance, or silent operation, use a solid state disk.
“Id say hard drives are good for anything you don’t access all the time.
Stuff like photos or videos,” software developer Agneev MukherjeetoldLifewirevia Twitter.
“SSD is overkill for almost anything other than boot disk/video editing.”
