Hdd or ssd which is better?

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I need to know which is more durable and faster
M2 SSD is the fastest.

Most reliable is probably an HDD, but in the expected lifetime of a drive an SSD is really just as reliable these days.

But which to use depends on what the drive is being used for? OS, games, data storage? etc etc etc.
 
M2 SSD is the fastest.

Most reliable is probably an HDD, but in the expected lifetime of a drive an SSD is really just as reliable these days.

But which to use depends on what the drive is being used for? OS, games, data storage? etc etc etc.
You see i have a lot of pictures and videos stored on my hdd so im wondering should i buy an hdd for that instead of an sdd as ive heard ssd lasts longer
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Reliability is a non-issue. Both are fine, both could fail, and you should have a backup whichever you use.

Videos gain no benefit from being on an SSD versus and HDD - one's as fast as the other for video playback. Photos can benefit from an SSD's faster load speeds if you are loading a lot of large pics to look at.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
As above. These days the Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) of a decent SSD is similar to that of an HDD, a decent SSD can even exceed the MTTF of a low end HDD. The days of avoiding writes to an SSD are also long gone, there have been some tests done that show some SSDs easily can sustain up to 700TB of write data before failing and that gives them an expected lifespan well in excess of 5 years.

On the other hand, when an HDD fails the data is usually still intact on the disk platters and is recoverable in all but a few cases. When an SSD fails it almost always results in catastrophic data loss. Regular backups are thus essential when using an SSD to store user data.

Windows and programs benefit massively from the improved speed of an SSD, you will easily see the speed improvement and the faster the SSD the better the improvement, so buying the fastest SSD you can afford is a wise investment. Currently the M.2 NVMe SSDs offer the best speeds, over 3000MB/s in some cases - compare that with the typical 160MB/s you get from an HDD.

Any user data that is in large files and which must be loaded quickly also benefits from being on an SSD, so high-res images, large databases, large spreadsheets, etc. should all be on an SSD - though here the cheaper NAND and SATA attached SSDs with read speeds of around 550MB/s are usually more than good enough.

Small user data files (less than 1MB in size) - and that's about 90% of most typical user data - do benefit from being on an SSD but the speed improvement is so small you really won't notice - the difference in loading time for a 1MB file between an SSD and an HDD is in milliseconds. That means it's not cost effective to put small user data files on an expensive SSD.

Because of the way they are processed, music and video files get absolutely no benefit at all from being loaded from an SSD, so don't waste any expensive SSD space on these types of file.

Currently, given the high cost of SSDs relative to HDDs, the best option is a small M.2 NVMe SSD just for for Windows and programs (128GB or 256GB say, depending on the number and size of your third-party software) and a large 7200rpm HDD for all user data (including images). If you work with high-res images a lot then a better choice would be a small M.2 NVMe SSD just for for Windows and programs (128GB or 256GB say), a large SATA NAND SSD for your high-res images (1TB say) and a large 7200rpm HDD for everything else. That's a much better choice than getting a large M.2 NVMe SSD and partitioning it for Windows/programs and images, both from a cost perspective and from a performance perspective.
 
Top