Computer Upgrades: Hard Drives, Part 2

Hybrid or Solid State Drives can be an easy computer upgrade.

The most vulnerable part of a hard drive is its moving parts. The disk spins, the spindle arm moves to read data, all the while creating heat, friction, and an opportunity to break when the moving stops. The next generation of hard drives - solid state drives and hybrid drives -attempt to rectify this by eliminating the spinning and swinging. However there are some tradeoffs: less storage and higher price. Is it worth upgrading?

Solid state drives (SSDs) are a flash storage device, meaning they work like a USB flash drive, just without the USB part. While from the outside, they look very similar to traditional hard drives, there is no spinning disk and herein lies a huge advantage.

A traditional drive is like a CD or record player. Data is written to a specific part of the drive, so opening an application or file requires that the disk spin to the right storage location and the read/write spindle access the data off the disk. Typically, opening a program requires your hard disk to be read in multiple places. SSDs access data faster, leading to faster system boot up and quicker load times for applications and games. This performance improvement is what leads many “power-users” to upgrade. However, the rest of us can benefit as well.

No moving parts make SSDs more durable and shock resistant. This can be a huge benefit in a laptop which gets jostled and banged around in transit. Since they don’t have to power a spinning disk, or a moving spindle, SSDs require less power consumption to access data. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you’re reliant on your laptop battery to make it through a flight, every little bit helps.


If you’re thinking, “sold!” its time I mention the drawbacks. SSDs are significantly more expensive and have lower storage capacities than traditional hard drives. While you can get a 1TB traditional hard drive for around $125 these days, the same amount of cash will buy only about 128GBs of solid state storage.

It’s really important to stick with reliable manufacturers – Crucial, OCZ and Intel produce strong contenders. Since the technology is still new, there are higher failure rates than would be expected, particularly with drives from less reputable companies. Also, performance and speed can degrade over time dependant on how data is stored. Look for manufacturers that integrate tools that evenly distribute how the drive writes data across the flash memory cells. Unfortunately, cheaper often equates to slower.

Some users have found that installing the operating system and applications on a SSD while storing data to a secondary, traditional hard drive gives them the best of both worlds: the responsiveness of an SSD with the capacity of a hard disk. However, running two drives can be complicated for basic users.

In an attempt to increase capacity and reduce price, some manufacturers have introduced “hybrid” drives. “Hybrids” fuse flash memory cells (to cache boot files and frequently accessed data) onto a traditional spinning drive. The hard disk offers the capacity for storing photos, videos and large packets of data while the flash cells improve speed and boot times. These can be a good alternative for laptop users where space is at a premium.

If you’re ready to upgrade to the speed and reliability of a SSD, contact me for my picks to get the most drive for your dollar.