HDD vs SSD: Storage capacity of the past and future

Should you use HDD or SSD? This is a debate that continues to this day, even though the original SSDs have been out for a decade. SSDs continue to improve in both durability and cost, but in terms of GB/$ ratio, it still can’t match HDD. But what about the near future?

The best SSDs for gaming continue to grow in capacity, while prices are falling. This is proof that the traditional HDD is no longer needed in most modern computers. Specifically, manufacturers of pre-installed computers now only add SSDs, completely eliminating HDDs: to reduce the time it takes to load games and work, and to push down the cost of their products (when compared to HDDs). computer with both SSD and HDD installed). In addition, SATA SSD shares market share with NVMe. According to DigiTimes, NVMe SSD sales will be on par with SATA SSDs in 2019.

All indicate a pretty clear decision for gamers: It’s time to give up HDD and switch to SSD altogether. However, the choice is not really clear, for many reasons. Here’s an analysis of when the HDD is at its best, as well as why you should go for an SSD.

The size of the game is getting bigger and bigger

Anyone who owns a massive game library understands that games are huge these days: with new games plus updates can cross the 100GB mark. That means next-gen games can easily exceed 150GB.

Current games have a capacity of 40-60GB, plus 2-4GB of updates on the first day. Although SSD prices continue to fall, spending an extra $50-$170 for a 512GB SSD just to accommodate 3-4 more games is really not the optimal solution. A 1TB SATA SSD for $100 is a much better choice, but it’s still a lot of money.

For the same price, you can get yourself a traditional 4TB HDD. Although the read / write speed is somewhat slower and consumes you more time looking at the loading screen, it saves you almost 8 times compared to buying an SSD just to store them.

Not to mention, we need to consider backing up data and storing movies. If you own a library of music, movies, and photos in your computer, HDD is still the best choice, both in terms of price and security. Online storage (Cloud) can reduce the burden on your computer, but some users are concerned about the security of this method. With the durability of current HDDs, they are still the best solution for storing your precious data.

Using SSD to start the computer is extremely useful

There are many reasons SSD is faster than HDD. They have no moving parts or spinning wheels, making access times much faster, at times almost instantaneous. That means SSDs don’t lose performance from ‘file fragmentation’. In an HDD, the reader has to rearrange sectors to properly read data, and slowly, it can slow down data access, especially when you start Windows.

How bad is it? It depends on many factors, like the speed of your hard drive (5400 rpm is noticeably slower than the 7200 rpm drive in terms of boot time), how long the hard drive has been used, how many applications are installed, and Has the drive ever run ‘file deframentation’, among other things.

With a new Windows 10 installed on a WD Black 4TB HDD, booting time (after the BIOS POST screen ends until entering the Windows 10 desktop) can take 20-30 seconds. On the slower WD Blue 2TB HDD, which is also the case, the boot time usually takes 30-40 seconds. As for a powerful SSD, like the Samsung 860 Evo 1TB, the boot time is usually 10 seconds.

However, it is a freshly installed Windows. As for Windows 10, a year old, with lots of updates and installed apps – things could be worse. Startup time of one minute or more is very high, especially when you have a lot of applications running at the same time that starts Windows. But with SSD, the time is only 10-15 seconds.

Using an SSD as your computer’s boot drive is one of the most obvious upgrades compared to an older computer. A lot of people still use PCs without SSD boot drives.

SSD performance in the game is not too different

Windows boot times are one thing, but games are another. There’s a lot of data to read, and you usually don’t run too many other things behind to mess up your hard drive. In fact, the difference when playing games between SSD and HDD is not really as different as what hard drive manufacturers promote. Although faster, but only in seconds, not minutes.

After testing the leading SSDs, including NVMe and SATA, with the 7200 RPM HDDs on the Metro Exodus, we have a comparison. The slowest HDD (Western Digital Blue 1TB) took more than 48 seconds to enter the game, while the other HDDs (Western Digital 2TB BLack) loaded gameplay in 40 seconds. On the SSD side, the most expensive 480GB Intel Optane 900P drive took just over 22 seconds, while the slowest SSD in our test, the 500GB Western Digital Blue 3D SATA took 33 seconds.

The above results are not too convincing if you consider buying an SSD for gaming. More importantly, the high-end Optane AIC is a lot more expensive, and the 280GB capacity isn’t really good for storing a game library. In contrast, the Western Digital Black, which costs a quarter of the price, has nearly 14 times the capacity, and takes just 16 seconds longer to run Metro Exodus.

For more light game comparisons, we tested the hard drive with the game Life is Strange. The fastest SSD is also only about 5 seconds faster than the slowest HDD. If you mainly play indie or ‘AA’ games, upgrading the SSD won’t really make a noticeable impact on your experience.

Of course, if you have extra money and want the most powerful machine, SSD is always the optimal solution. But if you want ‘great value for money’, HDD is equally attractive even though SSDs are still falling in price.

Internet influences decision

With the limitation of SSDs, you have to prioritize which games to load to play currently, while having to delete games that are not playing. But if you own a strong Internet connection, this is not too big of a problem. But if your connection is not fast or limited, then the HDD will show its storage power.

AAA games sometimes take an entire night to load. If you haven’t had time to play them yet but the hard drive space is full and need to store something else, SSDs are sometimes more of a waste of your time (deleting games, then having to reload due to insufficient hard drive space). So, if your network connection is good, and downloading games doesn’t take too long, just choose SSD. If the network is slow and you play AAA games a lot, then HDD should be the choice for you.

The “hybrid” solution

Money is always the most important decision when you consider whether to completely switch to an SSD. If you’re not limited by money, an SSD is obviously the obvious choice. But for almost every gamer (who has a limited budget like the author), HDD still has its place.

Even if you want to use an SSD to start your computer, buying an additional HDD as secondary storage is considered the best way in this regard. Use the HDD to store most of your games, videos, backups, and more. You can still copy some games onto the SSD, but some data doesn’t need the SSD’s speed.

According to PCgamer