If you follow computer technology than you’ve probably heard that Solid State Hard Drives (or SSDs) are the single best upgrade you can add to your computer. But what is an SSD and why is better?
What are they?
Picture a record player arm moving around a spinning record and you will have some idea on how an HDD hard drive boots up your programs and accesses your files. SSDs uses Microchips, however, so it doesn’t need to wait for an arm to travel or a record to spin because the Microchip stores all the data in one place and can therefore access what it need instantaneously. HDDs are the record players of the computer world and SSDs are the MP3 players.
Why are they better?
Lifespan – Expect SSDs to triple the 3-5 year life expectancy of a standard HDD because the parts that typically fail in an HDD are not used in an SSD
Performance – SSD’s perform as much as 3x faster than their HDD counterparts, with the most notable improvements happening during boot up time and program spin up
Physical Size – SSDs are great for laptops because they weigh about 50grams compared to the 120g – 625g of an HDD and roughly the same size as a laptop hard drive
Power Consumption – HDDs use about 1/8 to ¼ the power. For laptops that means less pull on the battery and for PC’s that means a lower energy bill. That also means the SSDs are cooler and don’t emit that lap burning heat.
Noise – HDDs come at 18-32 decibels while SSDs emit less than 1 decibel
Conclusion:
SSDs are better in every measurable way than then HDDs and, best of all, they continue to come down in price. Currently you can expect to pay about 7 cents per GB for an HDD and 14 cents a GB for SSDs.
LME has perfected our transfer process so if you think you would like to swap out your HDD for an SSD, you can expect to have your entire drive cloned in less than 2 hours
