Disk and Their Connectors

Today’s article is goona be dedicated on the storage division of the computer which we need unanimously.

There is bonus info at the end of blog specially you.

Yes! We are gonna talk about the data disks or storage disks that we unanimously use in our computer systems.

Not the old traditional ones like floppy disks or magnetic tape, we are gonna talk about modern drives like the HDD,

SSHD and SSD. This have special meanings and full forms as you can expect:

HDD: Hard Disk Drive

SSD: Solid State Drive

SSHD: Solid State Hybrid Drive

Well we have two input methods, simply internal and external. Speed varies with both methods.

SSD and HDD are available in both the methods but not the HSSD(at least not yet).

HDD

The Hard Disk Drive offer slow but vast amounts of data like upto 2TB(2 terabytes = 1024*2 gigabytes or 2048 GB) and goes upto 8 or 14 tb (segate barracuda pro).

There theoretical speeds are good enough for a one’s normal usage but, is often used for gamers side by side the main faster drive to reduce cost of normal file storage and not for gaming purposes(you can use but, its loading time will significantly differ from other drives’ loading time).

This uses magnetic spinning disks that limits the read and write speeds upto certain extent.

The hard disk offers various amounts of transfer rates and is useful for storing large data like movies, photos, videos, files(un-wanted or less important or even important),etc. that are slow to transfer but, instead of keeping them in a high speed which can be used for more useful data storage or gaming I’d prefer to store them in the HDD drive for future reference.

SSD

The fastest of all? Well we will see that later, but, this high-speed Solid-State Drive is very useful in gaming specially and is most popular type of storage that offers fast data transfers, secure storage and fast storage/flash storage.

On the other hand, SSDs use Semiconductors and flash memory technology that do not limit the speeds upto a limit like in the HDDs.

This offers un-compatible speeds but, has a dis-advantage over it’s cost and storage. The storage capacity of 2tb is also available but, the cost is too expensive for an average user. So, the compatible prising could be of 256 or maximum 512 gb SSD beyond that it’s too costly.

These are used mostly for gaming purposes and fast data transfer or storages for important files and also used for windows or linux or macos storage (os storage) for faster performance, boot time and speed. SSD also is used externally to store an os for multiple booting and also games for not keeping the pc low at storage space.

SSHD

The SSHD or the Solid-State Hybrid Drive gives the dual feature of the fast (SSD)as well as the vast storage(HDD).

These intelligent drives have two sections in the inside which use intelligent sensing for type of storage. It decides automatically to store drives to the SSD section and HDD section depending upon the usage of documents /files / applications, etc. but, definitely it will take some time to learn how to and where to store things.

Like if you try installing windows in it, it will definitely work as fast as an SSD but at 5th or 6th load/boot time(5th or 6th time you boot windows or any os) until then u will feel like you are you are driving on a simple HDD. But these guarantees speed like SSD’s when a file is opened multiple times.

These drives are most popular in budget PC’s builds with just one mega storage SSHD drive instead of SSD+HDD configuration. These range just like HDD’s but still a bit less than that and costs also are close to HDD’s.

Some terms that you might want to know.

Backward Compatibility

Backward compatibility means that you can run older versions of the same on the latest or the newest version or the specified version of hardware or software.

NVMe vs SATA vs SAS(connector to the motherboard)

SATA

SATA(Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) is one of the three popular interfaces/protocol used in transferring data that offers a suitable or the lowest speeds in data transferring in the internal setup of the lowest budget builds as it the most affordable kind of protocol with it’s latest version of SATA III which has a theoretical speed of 6 gbps and can get speeds upto 600mbps in actual transfer. And is also backward compatible.

SAS

SAS(Serial Attached SCSI(Standards for small Computer System Interface)) which is way more faster than SATA type of interface/protocol and usually is fail proof(to say one in a 1.2 million hours) compared to SATA(one in 700,000 hours). This special kind of interface uses less but safer storages upto 900gb while in case of SATA it handles storages upto 8 or even around 16 tb. It is usually used in enterprise computing and not normal computing where high speed and availability are crucial such as in banks.

NVMe

NVMe(Non-Volatile Memory Express)the latest and the fastest of all 3 protocols/interface that can achieve speed in multiples of a SATA and SAS interface. It is significantly better than any of these not only because of its speeds but also performance. Though not too good as the SAS in fail proof nature.

This is the ultimate speed, performance you can achieve. But this will definitely lead to lightweight your pocket more than expected.

Speed transfer comparison

SATA: 100mbps

SAS: 500mbps

NVMe: 3500mbps

Conclusion

Well each of these have combination with each other while the slowest gives you the vastness of storage and the fastest gives you max performance but still costing a bit expensive.

One of the best combinations used in gaming laptops are two NVMe M.2 SSD slots, two SATA slots one for SSD/SSHD and one for SSHD/HDD.

But it’s upon you how you want to spend and get one for your own pc build.

EH! What is this M.2? what is NAND? – you might ask. (some might already know ;-) )

Well I get back with this question and more related stuff on it next time on TECH TIME.! ;-)

TechTurtles

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