Page 4 - Computer Basics- Student Textbook

2. Storage of Data: Hard Drives - A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or
fixed disk, is an electro-mechanical data storage device that uses magnetic storage
to store and retrieve digital information using one or more rigid rapidly
rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. It spins at various speeds,
normally the faster the rotation of the platter, the faster access time to obtain data
from the disk.

Solid State Drives (SSD) In its simplest form, an SSD is flash storage and has no
moving parts whatsoever. It’s the same technology used in a flash drive. As a
result, they're smaller and take up less space in a PC case, and in some instances
are even mounted directly to the motherboard. SSD storage is much faster (up
to 10 times faster) than its HDD equivalent. An older computer can be sped up
tremendously by simply changing out the old hard disk to a new solid-state
drive.

HDD storage is made up of magnetic tape and has mechanical parts inside. They're larger than SSDs and much
slower to read and write.

One of the best uses for an SSD in a computer is as a boot drive. This means installing a small capacity drive on
which your Windows operating system will live and boot up from every day. By doing this, your PC will boot up and
be ready to go in a flash. You can also put your most frequently used software on there for a similar effect.

The lifespan of an SSD isn't as long as that of an HDD, but you can certainly use an SSD as your only drive in a PC.
Many laptops only have SSD storage, for example. You're not looking at a short-term life but compared to HDD
storage it is reduced. SSDs don't handle being written to as well over time, but a boot drive wouldn't suffer this.

The best case for HDD is mass storage. This type of drive is cheaper than SSD and available in some quite massive
sizes. Do you have a lot of games or media to keep on your PC? No problem! You can get one or more drives over
1TB (terabyte) in size for a fraction of the cost of their SSD equivalents.

PC cases usually have space for more than one drive, meaning you can stack up as much mass storage as you can
stash and your budget will allow.

Price per gigabyte is still much less than SSDs, and large capacity drives won't take all your money. An efficient
system would have an SSD to boot Windows from and one or more HDDs for mass storage (could be external).

You can purchase computers with a mixed system with HDD mass storage and an SSD boot drive for your operating
system install. This way you'll get a balance of price, performance, and space, and you'll have a well-rounded
machine for all occasions.

Flash drives (also called jump drives or flash sticks): They are handy
compact devices that you can use to transport your data (documents,
photos) from one computer to another. They can hold a lot of
information and are rewritable, which means you can use them over
and over again. Currently, the affordable capacity is between 1
Gigabyte (about $4) to 1 Terabyte (about $200). A 2 TB drive costs
about $1,650 (big price jump)!

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