News I finally replaced my PC hard drive with an SSD and you should, too

[News]

HDDs still last longer… probably


Outside of the ever-shrinking cost disparity between hard drives and SSDs, there is one area where hard drives still hold an advantage.

I’m talking longevity. Hard drives have been clearly shown to operate for years, or even decades, without data degradation. Backblaze’s annual drive stats paint a strong picture of most HDD models, that they can operate at high capacity for long periods of time without failing.

SSDs don’t have the same pedigree, but they can still last a long time before needing to be replaced. The latest models have Terabytes Written (TBW) ratings in the hundreds or even thousands of terabytes, so they can be written to over and over again without fear of diminished drive performance or instability when reading/writing data. In reality, most of us aren’t going to use up that many write cycles.

And it’s not like HDDs are immune from wear and tear. While conventional wisdom suggests that a hard drive can run for 5 to 10 years with light-to-moderate use, hard drive manufacturers typically only offer warranties of 2 to 3 years. Professional hard drives get about five years—and SSDs get about the same. For most consumers, 3 to 5 years is plenty.

There’s one large caveat here, though. When it comes to archiving data, or storing data in a drive that’s powered off for a long time, then hard drives absolutely take the cake. Since SSDs store data electronically rather than magnetically, the data itself can degrade if the SSD isn’t powered on for a long time. Hard drives don’t suffer that issue.

If you’re saving data offline in a drawer somewhere, then use a hard drive. Otherwise, you’ll benefit from using an SSD.