HDD vs SSD: Which is right for you?

When it comes to digital storage, there are a number of options available to you. Active Electronics stocks everything from SD cards to USB thumb drives, so when it comes to portable storage, we have you covered! However, when it comes to things such as security camera recordings or internal storage for your PC, you may have noticed that two main storage methods are available - Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and Solid State Drives (SSDs). Which one should you choose? The main differences boil down to speed, longevity, and price. HDDs quite literally have a disk inside them; when active, you may notice a slight whirring noise, and this is because a disk is being spun inside the casing that a metal arm is reading or writing to. It's almost like a DVD or CD, except the disk isn't intended to be removed - it is destined to read and write exclusively within its casing. This means that when you need to search for something on the HDD, like a picture of a cat, for example, the mechanical arm will search along the disk to find the image and read it. This can take time, and therefore, you may experience a slowdown on your device as it waits for the image to be read so it can be displayed on your computer - this is aptly referred to as its read speed. This can be improved somewhat by getting an HDD with a higher RPM, which refers to how fast the disk spins. Common values are 5200 or 7200RPM drives. HDDs have been around for many years at this point and have thus historically been sold at a lower price point than SSDs, making them a great choice if you need particularly large capacities for things like media servers. They're also a great option if the storage is mainly used to retain data, such as CCTV recordings - the latency will rarely be a problem if you're only accessing the footage every so often. The only other thing worth noting is that given these hard drives have moving parts, they often need replacing every 10-15 years or so, depending on its usage. Our Dahua Security Camera range can be configured with up to 6 terabytes of storage out of the box using an HDD, giving you plenty of storage capacity at an affordable price!

SSDs, on the other hand, do not have any moving components and therefore have a number of advantages to them. They're quick and snappy as they can locate their files near-instantly, and they aren't susceptible to mechanical failures the same way HDDs do. In fact, many SSDs are limited only by the connector they're plugged into! SATA SSDs will fit into most HDD slots and operate as fast as the SATA port allows. Hardware necessitating higher read/write speeds will often use a different standard known as PCIe, more commonly referred to as M.2. At the time of writing, the latest PCIe Gen 5 SSDs can read information at rates higher than 10 gigabytes a second! SSDs are typically more expensive than their HDD counterparts, but as the technology evolves, it's becoming more affordable than ever and is a no-brainer investment for devices where you want fast speeds - such as booting up a PC, running local AI language models or videogames where assets visibly pop-in. Active Electronics can supply SSDs for any use case, so feel free to check out our range - we're able to order from leaders in the industry such as Samsung, Micron Crucial, Lexar and more!