If you have been using computers for years, the chances are you have been using just a normal standard Hard Disk Drive (HDD). And although the hdd’s have improved a lot over the years with speed, size and reliability they are no where near as fast as the new Solid State Drives (SSD’s).
What is a hard drive?
A hard drive is often mistaken with the computer tower itself or the casing you have the button in when turning your computer on and off.
Your hard drive is actually a little box roughly the size of a iphone 6 which sits deep inside your computer.
All your files are stored on your hard drive including your operating system, your pictures, movies and programs etc.
You can see your hard drive by going into my computer on your desktop and clicking on (most of the time) the C: drive. There you will see a lot of files such as system files and files you have stored on your computer.
Your hard drive in an essential part of your computer in which you would not be able to use without. You can think of the hard drive as the brain of your computer in that it stores all your information.
Traditional Hard Disk Drives
The most common of all hard drives is the one your probably using right now.
How the traditional hard drive works is it rapidly spins like an old record player saving, reading and writing data on disks coated with magnetic material.
Most hard drives run at 5400 or 7200 rpm and are very good at quickly accessing your data and files.
These types of hard drives are particularly susceptible to sudden movements and often fail due to wear and tear. You can imagine at 7200 revolutions per minute how many times your hard drive would go around and around in its life time, a lot of wear and tear.
The New Sold State Drives
Solid State Drives are the new and improved hard drives we are starting to see more and more of. Initially they were some what of a novelty item and where to expensive to have in your computer.
They have now come down a lot in price and are standard in a lot of ultra book laptops and gaming PC’s.
They are still more expensive than traditional hard drives and bang for your buck twice as small, but they are extremely fast and after a minute of using one it is easy to see the difference in your computers performance and boot time.
SSD’s use semiconductor chips rather than magnetic media resulting in much faster read and write speeds.
The result is a mush faster and more reliable hard drive, no as susceptible to damage due to knocks and wear and tear as there are no moving parts.
SSD’s are very similar to the USB thumb storage drives you can but for $10 and store small amounts of information on and then put in your draw.
Do I need a Solid State Drive
For the basic home or business user you do not need a Solid State Drive. Yes, they are nice to have and increase performance but unless you are doing something specific and need extra read write speeds it is not essential.
For people who play the latest high definition 3d games that take ages to load it can definitely be a good idea to have a SSD to increase load times and for people who deal with big files such ad graphics and video editing it can be of great assistance.
If you have any questions about Hard Disk Drives please call Townsville Nerds today. If you would like to make your computer faster a Solid State Drive can surely be the way to go.
