Is it better to use a HDD or SSD for main storage?

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Nick Liddell

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Apr 15, 2014
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Im building my gaming/work computer and need to choose a hard drive. What are the advantages of having a HDD over a SSD? I want the most speed out of my hard drive as possible. I was considering a SSD but a friend told me that they dont last very long and I should get a regular HDD. Is he right? Should I buy a regular HDD for the long term reliability, or a SSD for speed and performance? How long would a SSD last me if used on a daily basis for gaming and Adobe apps usage?
 
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ssddx
the difference in speed between a ssd and hdd is truly great. even a brand new system if outfitted with a hdd for the main storage will feel much slower than expected. in order for the system to feel as speedy as you are thinking it should be you need to use a ssd.

i've been using a ssd as the main drive for both of my computers for several years without issues and the one is a daily driver. ssd drives are capable of unlimited reads however they do have a certain maximum amount of writes per cell. this normally isnt an issue though unless you write lots of data (i'm talking some pretty large amounts here... and for a pretty long span of time) or if you ignore the 80% capacity rule and push the drive closer to 100% in which case the...
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leeb2013

leeb2013

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HDD advantages are - cost and size. Reliability is difficult to predict as modern SSDs haven't been around long enough to study. Their quoted reliability runs into 10+ years. Theoretically, as they have no moving parts, they should be more reliable, but they have limited read/writes to flash memory. HDD reliability varies dramatically between manufacturers, some fail within months!

With either solution, just make sure you have a regular backup. I find the best solution is to have a NAS with dual mirrored HDDs which most all my important stuff goes on. I then have a 256GB SSD for the operating system and apps, which makes the PC fast and snappy, this gets backed up every month or so. In the PC I have a 3TB HDD for games, which again occasionally gets copied to another HDD. Not so important as most games are off Steam/Origin so can be downloaded again and games saves are online, for anything not backed up.
 
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Kromletch

Kromletch

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May 12, 2012
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Lifespan Is hardly an issue in my opinion with these. If your interested take a look at this evaluation of ssds.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/4178/10/hardwareinfo-tests-lifespan-of-samsung-ssd-840-250gb-tlc-ssd-updated-with-final-conclusion-final-update-20-6-2013

In a nutshell this is what I discovered

"That translates to a lifespan of 75 years. Even when you push an SSD to the max by downloading lots of movies everyday up to an average of 30 GiB per day, the SSD will still last you 24 years. "

I own an ssd and doubt I Will ever go back, Its just too fast. I use it as my main drive with my OS on it, as well as my best games. I have a secondary 2TB Hdd for anything else.
 
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ssddx

ssddx

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May 27, 2009
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the difference in speed between a ssd and hdd is truly great. even a brand new system if outfitted with a hdd for the main storage will feel much slower than expected. in order for the system to feel as speedy as you are thinking it should be you need to use a ssd.

i've been using a ssd as the main drive for both of my computers for several years without issues and the one is a daily driver. ssd drives are capable of unlimited reads however they do have a certain maximum amount of writes per cell. this normally isnt an issue though unless you write lots of data (i'm talking some pretty large amounts here... and for a pretty long span of time) or if you ignore the 80% capacity rule and push the drive closer to 100% in which case the drive has no choice but to use the same cells over and over.

if you want reliabililty... the samsung 840 pro is top notch. if you dont intend to write GB of data every day onto the drives then an 840 evo or intel drive is perfectly fine. all of the other brands leave a bit to be desired (most other brands failed even their own listed MTBF ratings)

--

unless you have some pretty insane usage patterns a ssd will be fine and is what you should use for your main (boot) drive and also what you should launch applications from.

if you do video editing or use a scratch drive... this should be a secondary hdd drive since they are larger, cheaper per gb, and do not have the same maximum write issue as ssds.

sshd are a good middle ground but you would be better served by seperate drives in my opinion. i would go for a 250gb samsung 840 ssd and a 1tb western digital, seagate or samsung hdd.
 
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Deemo13

Deemo13

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Wow, I had no idea about those statistics. I was only expecting my SSD to last about 5 years. That's awesome!
 
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ssddx

ssddx

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yes, the statistics can be pretty impressive considering the bad hype they get.

do keep in mind though that not all ssd are created equal. as i stated before if you want reliability for high-write applications there are only a few that i would trust. if all you intend to do is install a few programs and not write much data then anything will work
 
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