SSD Vs HDD Comparison

By Sanjay Chawla On Sep 03, 2010 Site: Electronics Design Engineering Lounge (Public) Type: Blog - Tags: Electronics - # of views: 2476

Reliability of the drives

HDD drives use mechanical parts are there lifespan is limited. While SSD using flash memory can sustain almost 100,000 write cycles per write cell.

Read/Write Speeds

The typical access time for a Flash based SSD is about 35 – 100 micro-seconds, whereas that of a rotating disk is around 5,000 – 10,000 micro-seconds. That makes a Flash-based SSD approximately 100 times faster than a rotating disk.

HDD data transfer rate at the rate of 80 megabytes per second typically.

SSD data transfer rate at the rate of 170 megabytes per second typically.

Audible noise

HDD have audible clicks and crunching sounds. While SDD drives are often quieter because they have no mechanical parts

Vibration

SSDs are naturally more rugged than HDDs. SSD drive can sustain up to 1,500 Gs of shock before sustaining damage or a drop in performance, while HDD drives can withstand up to 350 Gs while operating and 800 Gs when turned off.

Reliability

SSD have the ability to deliver unnerving performance in extreme conditions making it to play a vital role in military operations, defence, aerospace or aviation applications. Military applications require, in most cases, an operating temperature range of -60°C to +95°C. Shock, vibration, and temperature ratings of HDDs cannot comply with military standards, only SSDs can.

Power Play

SSDs have low power consumption over HDDs

Heat Dissipation

Along with the lower power consumption, there is also much lesser heat dissipation for systems using Flash-based SSDs as their data storage solution. This is due to the absence of heat generated from the rotating/movable media. This certainly proves to be the one of the main advantages of Flash-based SSDs relative to that of a traditional HDD. With less heat dissipation, it serves as the ideal data storage solution for mobile systems such as PDAs, notebooks, etc.

Cost Considerations

The cost of SSD is typically $3 per gigabyte, while traditional hard drives cost about 20 to 30 cents per gigabyte