HD v SSD

lonestarfan

I’m comparing laptops. I notice you get 1TB HDD or 256 SSD for the same money. I’m trying to compare and choose a laptop. Which is better value the HDD or the SSD.
Many thanks. 

mksysb

Depends on your requirements.  If you want fast startup of programs go for ssd.  If you have vast amounts  of videos/photos/music then for for the hdd.

Carrot007

Always get a SSD. Even the bad ones (beyond something they call SSD which are not but they will be really small (well I guess they may technically be by name, but not what most people mean)).

A 10+ year old laptop can be made usable with an SSD (and prefereably maxing the ram). A new laptop with a mechanical drive with whatever will be "slower".

But yes some people need space. A supplimental mech drive in a laptop can be good if there is space. However often this is seen as premium. And even if the low end laptop (some are good, mine was lowish 128ssd which I repaced with 512ssd saving more than going there in the first place or ordering more than I needed!) supports a HD they tend not to put the caddy buts in it (mine does support a 2.5 but the parts are indeed missing, though could ebay for not a lot if I wanted). However If you need that space buy a nice USB 3 external. I think 6TB is the sweet spot in pricing for 3.5 drives. Not sure with 2.5 as I dont need small! (of buy 2 4TB's and actually back things up! or whatever!).

Belenus

Ideally find a laptop with both.

Many new laptops have a M.2 SSD on the motherboard plus an internal 2.5 inch HD.

The OS and apps go on the fast SSD and your data goes on the slower but higher capacity HD.

128gb or 256gb M.2 SSD is usually enough but you can get larger capacity.

1TB HD is usually enough for most people's data needs.

neilmcl

lonestarfan said:

I’m comparing laptops. I notice you get 1TB HDD or 256 SSD for the same money. I’m trying to compare and choose a laptop. Which is better value the HDD or the SSD.
Many thanks. 

Decide what is important to you. Machines running off a SSD are faster, especially at start up but generally HDD are better for storage. Go for the SSD, you can always add extra, external storage at a later date. Most people with general PC use will hardly go anywhere near 256Gb anyway.

interstellaflyer

neilmcl said:

lonestarfan said:

I’m comparing laptops. I notice you get 1TB HDD or 256 SSD for the same money. I’m trying to compare and choose a laptop. Which is better value the HDD or the SSD.
Many thanks. 

Decide what is important to you. Machines running off a SSD are faster, especially at start up but generally HDD are better for storage. Go for the SSD, you can always add extra, external storage at a later date. Most people with general PC use will hardly go anywhere near 256Gb anyway.

You'll probably find that the 256GB SSD is PCIe NVMe M.2 on current laptops so so you may have facility for an internal SATA SSD/HDD, on my 2 year old HP Pavilion Laptop I'm running a Sabrent M.2 NVMe SSD for the boot drive and a Crucial MX500 SSD as internal storage.

A_Lert

Solid State Drive, always. The difference is enormous. Regular hard drives are slow, you'll be waiting for the computer to start, for programs to open, even for websites to load (because the browser tries to use cached files). In my view a computer with only a mechanical hard drive is substandard nowadays.

CoastingHatbox

An SSD is a boon in a portable device, not only for the performance differences, but the SSD having no moving parts, is less likely to be damaged if/when the laptop gets knocked about.

Laptops with both an SSD and a HDD are relatively expensive. SSDs are still improving in terms of £/gigabyte, so there are some laptops around with 1TB of storage.

Some laptops have their storage soldered onto the motherboard. You ideally want the storage to be replacable, so look out for that in reviews. Also, some laptops are advertised as having eMMC storage, which as far as I understand it, is a similar technology to the NAND chips used in SSD drives but eMMC storage is always soldered on to the laptops motherboard and is usually a lot slower than discrete SSD storage.

If you need to store a lot of data (music, pictures, video etc.) I would suggest using Network Attached Storage, or a cloud storage solution that doesn't synchronize all of your files to your local machine. All my laptops/computers have small SSDs. All the data I care about is stored on a file server I built, which has daily snapshots so I can recover an earlier snapshot if I'm unfortunate enough to get cryptoware'd. I also have daily backups to a second identical server. You don't need to go to these lengths of course, it is just important to think about how you are going to look after your data, especially if it is photos of loved ones etc..

Mickey666

CoastingHatbox said:

An SSD is a boon in a portable device, not only for the performance differences, but the SSD having no moving parts, is less likely to be damaged if/when the laptop gets knocked about.

Laptops with both an SSD and a HDD are relatively expensive. SSDs are still improving in terms of £/gigabyte, so there are some laptops around with 1TB of storage.

Some laptops have their storage soldered onto the motherboard. You ideally want the storage to be replacable, so look out for that in reviews. Also, some laptops are advertised as having eMMC storage, which as far as I understand it, is a similar technology to the NAND chips used in SSD drives but eMMC storage is always soldered on to the laptops motherboard and is usually a lot slower than discrete SSD storage.

If you need to store a lot of data (music, pictures, video etc.) I would suggest using Network Attached Storage, or a cloud storage solution that doesn't synchronize all of your files to your local machine. All my laptops/computers have small SSDs. All the data I care about is stored on a file server I built, which has daily snapshots so I can recover an earlier snapshot if I'm unfortunate enough to get cryptoware'd. I also have daily backups to a second identical server. You don't need to go to these lengths of course, it is just important to think about how you are going to look after your data, especially if it is photos of loved ones etc..

THAT is the key thing regardless of storage technology because ALL forms of storage WILL fail eventually.  The ONLY protection we have is to make multiple copies of anything important.  Fortunately, digital data can be copied perfectly again and again and again.

People must decide for themselves how important their data is but I usually encourage them to think of their PC/laptop/tablet/phone somehow breaking beyond repair or being stolen and lost forever and then ask themselves how much that would matter to them.

poppasmurf_bewdley

I'm writing this on a 250Gb SSD HP laptop after two years with a 1Tb HDD Toshiba. It cost quite a bit more, but the performance is outstanding.  Instead of half an hour with a Microsoft update, it's two or three minutes.

I've had the SSD for 12 months today.  Would I do back.  Hell, no!  

jsmith9

There is absolutely no doubt that if you are going to buy a new laptop, get one with a SSD drive - ie your c-drive. 

If you don't have much data, then a 256GB or 512GB should be more than fine.

If you have lots of data, then get a 256 SSD and then a normal HDD to store your data. This can be put in the spare laptop bay (check the laptop has this) or an external USB HDD. 

I have a 256GB SSD laptop as my c-drive and a 6TB external HDD for data (d-drive)