Hard Drives Vs SSD's

[Wildnomad]

Hi there,

I recently configured a PC on the PS Specialist website and have a few questions.

• Under the 'Hard Drives' section there are many listed and some are labelled 'SSD' (e.g. 1TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6GB). Are these solid state hard drives or mechanical hard drives with moving parts?

• Under 'Additional Storage Options' there is also the option of M.2 SSD drives. I assume these are solid state drives and not mechanical. Are they quicker and more reliable than the Samsung drives in the hard drive section and are they appropriate to run Windows 10 and other software such as Maya, Photoshop and video editing software? I'm thinking of getting two of these rather than two mechanical drives.

Best regards
Mike.

 

[Wildnomad]

You basically have 4 types of hard drive these days:

1) HDD: This is basically what is called a Platter Drive. It essentially has a disc which spins, much like a CD, and the data is stored on the disc. These are good for storage options as they will give you advanced warning if a drive failure is imminent so you can arrange a replacement. Downside is they are quite slow but are handy for storage where speed isn't a factor. If you have an Xbox, then this is the drive in the Xbox One.
2) SSD: An evolution of drives which have no moving parts. Not entirely sure how they work but they are generally able to run for longer due to the lack of moving parts. However, a drive failure is often instant with no warning. Generally they are either used for people who want Ultra-Quiet systems or those who need quick storage
3) M2: The M2 drive is an evolution of the SSD. These drives are now a small chip which slots directly onto the motherboard. Their speeds are usually 4-5 times faster than a normal SSD (sometimes more depending on the model) so lead to quicker loading times. Most systems these days should really have an M2 drive unless budget is so low as to make it unaffordable.
4) M2 Gen 4: These are Ultra Fast M2 drives, the latest generation. Speeds 10 times quicker than a traditional SSD are here, twice the speed of some normal M2 drives. These are for systems where budget is quite high as they are a "luxury" purchase.

Most systems we usually recommend an 512GB M2 drive (the PCS variant is excellent value) for WIndows, applications etc, games currently being played if a gamer and then a 1tB or more HDD as a storage drive for documents, audio and video files where speed of access is not important, games being kept but not currently in use

Hope that helps somewhat

Thanks a lot Nursemorph. That's really helpful!

So, just to be clear, the 'Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6GB' is actually a Solid State Hard Drive just not as quick as the M.2 SSD. The main disadvantage to both SSD's is that they don't give warning when they go pop. Is that right?

Mike

 

[ubuysa]

Thanks a lot Nursemorph. That's really helpful!

So, just to be clear, the 'Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6GB' is actually a Solid State Hard Drive just not as quick as the M.2 SSD.

Yes, that's correct (although it's a Solid State Drive, not a Solid State Hard Drive - there's no hard disk in an SSD. An SSD is basically fast flash memory). Though "just not as quick" is an understatement, most SATA SSDs manage around 550MB/s (megabytes per second) read speeds whilst even a fairly average M.2 NVMe SSD can manage 2000MB/s and some are more than double that. An average HDD in contrast will be doing well to manage 160MB/s.

The main disadvantage to both SSD's is that they don't give warning when they go pop. Is that right?

Mike

That's also correct, although SSDs are extremely reliable these days. Even with an HDD it is vital that you keep regular (daily) backups of your valuable data, that's even more important with an SSD. As long as you regularly backup your data an SSD failure (or even an HDD failure) isn't the end of the world. BTW. I've seen more than a few HDDs fail without warning, and some where the data was unrecoverable.

 

[Gavras]

Yes, that's correct (although it's a Solid State Drive, not a Solid State Hard Drive - there's no hard disk in an SSD. An SSD is basically fast flash memory). Though "just not as quick" is an understatement, most SATA SSDs manage around 550MB/s (megabytes per second) read speeds whilst even a fairly average M.2 NVMe SSD can manage 2000MB/s and some are more than double that. An average HDD in contrast will be doing well to manage 160MB/s.

That's also correct, although SSDs are extremely reliable these days. Even with an HDD it is vital that you keep regular (daily) backups of your valuable data, that's even more important with an SSD. As long as you regularly backup your data an SSD failure (or even an HDD failure) isn't the end of the world. BTW. I've seen more than a few HDDs fail without warning, and some where the data was unrecoverable.

Fully agree on HDD’s suddenly giving out, experienced it personally and in previous job we had circa 80,000 in the field with a fairly high attrition rate (age plays a part as does % of totals).

the other bit to add to the mix is PCIe 4.0, RTX IO and Microsoft’s Direct storage API.

it would be interesting seeing a new AMD system with the above enabled.