Does anybody still use mechanical hard drives?

I for one have never used an SSD. I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but hard drives seem fast enough, and the system feels very responsive with lots of RAM. I can't wait a second for things to load into RAM, and once I am working on something, I never notice any delays. Anyone remember when the Western Digital Raptor first debuted? 3.5" 36GB 10k RPM SATA I. I bought one but wasn't thrilled by it. The only difference I felt were the vibrations it was making. Since then I've been more about maximizing storage space for my dollar.

I have always needed lots of storage space and currently run two 1TB Hitachi 5K1000 drives in my Lenovo Thinkpad. They are the fastest 2.5" 5400 rpm drives currently available and are on-par with my 2TB 3.5" drives in performance. Currently the largest available drives are 1.5TB, with the Hitachi 5k1500 being quite good, and maybe the only one at 9.5mm. The fastest one I think is the Hitachi 7k1000. These drives all perform well and have lots of storage space. They have gotten to the point that I have switched to a USB 3.0 2.5" 2TB for my portable external drive.

Anyway, people always say to get a 7200rpm drive over a 5400rpm drive, but the fastest large capacity 5400rpm drives are faster than the sub-1TB 7200rpm drives. Platter density is really one of the most important factors in performance. Before purchasing any drive you should take a look at some benchmark comparisons between them, you might be surprised.

 

I haven't been able to fully enjoy my SSD, because my laptop's i3 1.3 GHz CPU bottlenecks it at times. Sigh.

 

My laptops only have SSDs (my W530 has two right now).

On my desktops I tend to use a mixture of HDDs ( since 1 TB SSDs are way too expensive) and SSDs.

 

I've been all SSD in my laptops since 2008. Wouldn't use mechanical as my primary drive even if you paid me... (well, I guess it depends on how much).

 

My current main laptop is SSD only (only one HDD bay, and it has an Intel 320). My original main laptop, a W520, now has a 180GB Intel 330 as well as a Seagate 750GB HDD (for bulk storage). Desktop only has HDDs in it, and that's fine with me since I usually do something else while it boots up (and SSDs don't offer any real advantages in gaming).

 

Laptop is only SSD and I wouldn't go back to a HDD as my OS drive.

The difference between a HDD and a SSD has nothing to do with the difference between a raptor WD drive and a regular 7.2K RPM drive.

 

SSD's only! In laptops primarily. I have my 28TB home server array including backups, etc for any major size files (about 13TB useable, rest is backup/redundancy). I don't need the space I used to, but it's nice to have that much storage available, and anything that I find worthy of keeping goes there. I do like to keep files local, even though I have a 256GB mSATA + 1TB SATA SSD, I could make due with a single 512GB, just force me to clean up my clutter more frequently. I download and trial so much crap, that my downloads folder grows to 500GB+ in no time.

 

I've been all SSD since 2009 as well. To say a HDD will perform close to an SSD with more RAM is absolutely wrong.

Performance for dollar, I for one have never really never cared about performance for dollar for storage wise. I want reliability and speed, and that is something mechanical drives do not offer. My ultraportable are taken everywhere, and sometimes I move the laptop around while it is still on. This is where mechanical drives are a no-no. That is what kills mechanical drives. Also I don't ever want to fear a click click noise when I power on my machine, SSDs give me that piece of mind. I can tell you of the tons of SSDs I have owned vs mechanical drives, I've had 2 die in a really bad electrical short, vs 10x more mechanical HDDs go kaput.

Am I saying no to mechanical drives 100%? Absolutely not, they are the best bargain for storage excluding cloud. But even that is kept as multiple backups as mechanical drives do kick the bucket. But my day to day computers don't need mechanical drives for the most part. Once I get an SSD into my P170HM, the 500 GB spinner will be only for storage internally.

 

256GB SSD + 1TB HDD. Works great. Though I'll probably get a 1TB SSD for my next notebook.

 

Also, SSDs are much more shock resistant than HDDs. Plus, you can put the laptop in the bag while its still shutting down. For a HDD, you risk damaging it. for SSD, no moving parts, and the shutdown/startup will be a lot faster anyways.

 

I only use SSDs, except on the nas.

There is a large difference in responsiveness and I have very little patience with computers

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

I'm SSD only in my Asus laptop because it only has 1 bay and I have a Samsung 830 256GB for it, though when I was using my HDX18 I had the same SSD paired with an HDD.

It's nice to not have to worry about damaging an HDD because you didn't wait for the drive to spin down properly when moving it, aside from the speed benefits.

 

2 SSDs in my Thinkpad W530 - one 2.5" 256GB Samsung 830 and one mSATA 256GB Crucial m4. I have an external 1TB hard drive for backups, though.

 

I find it interesting at how much writing the SSDs can take: The SSD Endurance Experiment: 500TB update - The Tech Report - Page 1

Based on what Tech Report reported, it seems that the SSDs are more likely to fail due to bad firmware, controller, circuit board, NAND die that got past inspection, power surge, or any other failures not caused by wear downs.

 

In one way, it's impressive. In another, it's not.

Reminds me of the engines tested and running for 1,000,000 miles - in a lab. Yawn.

 

Most of the laptops in my household are on SSDs as boot drives...however:

a) I do own several old ThinkPads which utilise PATA drives and won't run anything newer than XP. Only spinning drives on those.

b) I'm not wealthy enough to have TBs of storage on SSDs. My backups - which exist in multitudes - are on conventional hard drives, along with other means.

 

I know SSD's are more shock resistant than HDD's, but HDD's are not as fragile as some people think. You can move your computer around while it is running, it is not a problem. You can also start a shut down or have it do updates and throw it in a bag, it is ok. You just don't want any hard, sudden, high-G impacts. Even so, just the other day I had both of my laptops out on a table in my living room and I accidentally tripped over the power cord of my netbook. It was copy files to a USB key at the time and it fell down and hit the hardwood floor. It kept running just fine.

Also, mechanical drives are a lot more reliable than they used to be. Ten years ago I had drives dying left and right. These days it just doesn't happen anymore. I still keep a menagerie of storage drives, but the only drive failure I have experienced in the last few years was in my girlfriend's computer.

When they came out everyone was raving about how much faster they were, but I really couldn't tell the difference at all. I have used a few computers with SSD's in them, and yes, the difference is very noticeable at certain times, but I still don't really care at all. I guess I'm just weird.

I didn't say that. When the computer is on, after opening a file or program, I don't notice the hard drive bottlenecking performance.

For me storage space is the primary concern. It used to be that I would just buy a single drive that was the cheapest per GB as my storage needs expanded or I didn't have any free PATA or SATA ports on my motherboard or expansion card, or my tower just could not fit any more drives. Now my living situation doesn't make it easy to have lots of hardware, so for me data density is the primary concern. Sure, it is great that the cost per GB is much less for a mechanical drive, but what is more important is that I can fit more data on a mechanical drive. Right now I have 2 1TB drives in my computer. I guess 1TB SSD's are cost prohibitive anyway, but I am planning on getting 1.5TB drives about a month from now when I get back to China where they are a lot cheaper. If I travel, need everything backed up twice, and can't rely on any cloud crap, I don't have many options. But at the same time, I don't feel that I am missing much either.

But I have a question. My computer has a free full-sized mini-pci express slot on it. It is supposedly for a wimax card, but could I put an SSD in there? If that is so, I could buy one to try out.

 

If it's a ThinkPad, the answer is "no".

 

If its another brand most likely no

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

My real question is why people need 1 TB of space for normal usage. If you edit high res photos or edit movies, fine so be it. But normal home user shouldn't really use past 160-250 GB HDD space. And 1 TB SSDs are like 500-600....it's not that expensive. I paid 340 for my 500 GB 840. When SSDs first came out, 64 GB SLC was 1k.

Again cost shouldn't be a major issue for home users, getting a 128-256 GB should be fine for 99.9% average joes.


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I would disagree some don't have budgets as some here would like to dream to have. We the others have other things/debts to pay for and spending as much as you did for a drive with smaller space compared to HDD isn't a very efficient way to conserve and store information. Remember in this digital age people store more then just data files on their PC ie video pictures songs and downloaded movies and those will eat space up faster then you or anyone may think otherwise. The Laptop HDD is everyones' life nowdays and that is the jest of it one can't just dismiss it anymore and having a small SSD is a waste of precious storage space for the money it is worth. I for one have Mass storage HDD on my desktop to archive files from way back and that takes HDD to store all that info and for my laptop they are all still HDD as I don't find any real pressing need to spend over budget on SSD for something a HDD can more then store and have left over to store more. Not everyone has your dream system and have to live with what they have and can afford. Your SSD isn't going to put food on the table...that takes money and when you spend money on SSD you will have to belt tighten in the process. And as for those HDD failure stories SSD also has failures as well so trying to use that line is just a dead end line and needs to have a better pickup line to use those phrases. As anything you abuse the hardware and it will fail plain and simple truth and also anything electronic HDD or SSD can fail even if new the day you buy it or next day or last years before failure sets in. But at least with HDD you can save the data when it starts the death click and with SSD well it just dies no recovery nothing. Which now would one risk their data on???

 

It does matter what "normal home users" are using their storage for. Many people store a lot of pictures, music, and videos that can fill up space quickly. Also, games take up a lot of storage space. Personally, I am feeling the limits of my 256GB system drive due to the games I have installed.

 

I take lots of pictures and videos. I save tons of things I find on the internet. I have lots of music, movies, and TV shows saved. I like to save EVERYTHING. For personal data, I always keep two backups; one backup on hand, and one backup far away.

1TB ssd's for $600? No thank you. Not only is it ridiculously expensive for how much space it is, but I will never buy another single drive with only 1TB again.

 

I have ~1.4TB movies/series, ~0.6Tb music, and my collection is always growing. There is no place for SSD in my laptop, especially while hybrid drives perform pretty well.

 

Once you have tasted SSD, it`s hard to go back to HDD, I sold my 256gb SSD and tried the hybrid seagate momentus xt 1tb hdd for the extra space, but it was still too slow, so i bought an used 512gb SSD from Ebay as a new one is too expensive, very happy now.

John.

 

I voted only SSD because that is the state of my laptop at this moment. However, that exclusivity is about to change as soon as my HDD and optical bay caddy arrives.

The three storage bays I have no longer are sufficient for my needs. I know the amount of data would soon limit them, but I purchased the amount I needed at the time. Especially since the limitation during that time was 512GB and the price for those larger drives would have been prohibitive.

My plan was to simply wait for the capacity to increase, the prices to go down, and I needed more space. That time, is now.

I've crunched the numbers, and although I can now add 1TB to each bay, it would not be economically efficient to add an SSD solely for storage.

My biggest limitation now is storage; and having a place to off-load my temporary raw files. Since my card's transfer rate does not exceed the speed of my HDD by a large enough margin (141/118), to justify using an SSD at 8X the cost.

However, I will upgrade my internal SSD to 3X 1TB over the next couple months, and include the 1TB HDD in my OB for the storage.

This would be the most efficient, practical and economical configuration for video editing use. For now, storage is still the one area where an HDD is more desired over an SSD.

 

Small SSD for the OS - no waiting! Large Spinning Disk for everything else!

(By the way, nice looking mouth & tongue! Haha, if they're yours of course! Well, even if they're not it's still valid!)

 

Again different perspective. Again for me, most of my stuff; anime, music,
movies are all stored externally. My photos too and are spread all over web storage. So I have no need for massive mechanical storage. I want a reliable boot drive, something HDDs don't offer.

I don't see 600 being expensive for a 1 TB, it is far cheaper then what it was 2-3 years ago, aka 500-600 for 512 GB. Sometimes it's not about money, when you spend 2-4k on a laptop, 400-500 is kinda chump change. And no I'm not über rich either, but sometimes I value convenience and performance over money. If I thought SSDs were expensive and not worth it, not all my machines would have SSDs for a boot drive, but they are for me.


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I trust those sights as much as I can trust the NSA looking at my files. And should a Cracker get your account you can kiss those files goodbye and it has happen if one thinks otherwise. Your online files are a gold mine for scammer and Crackers. You really making a big stretch to make the claim HDD isn't reliable that is just like saying your Ford Pinto is reliable if you go with your conclusion. SSD are no more reliable then HDD but HDD has one leg better they offer more capacity for less price-that is something SSD will never beat out and until I can buy a 1tb SSD for the price of 1tb HDD then I buy it but til then. Just look at Facebook you thought you left but nope you gave them control of all your content even when you thought you left the web-sphere but nope your still there and all your files were archived to their server-yeah that is what I like to them own my files. And also how a Cracker got a News Reporter account and wiped out all their Iphone account and pictures which are gone now it was a big news on this happening so those are a few examples of the word "Trust Us" your files are safe-my a%%...... IMO

Sorry but not all of us have 600US laying around to just pop off when there are more pressing needs in life to take care of and as anything others have to budget with food or starve. This isn't only perspective but reality in life nowdays the 99% don't have what the 1% can just pop off. Convenience is being able to have money for a rainy day and chump change is only because those manufacture get bottom discount for having SSD drive in their laptops you the user will never get those discounts however how one like to discount that notion. You can spend 2-4K on laptop but the drive was dirt cheap for the manufacture to buy 1,000 or more of them you the buyers just buying 1,000 would go bankrupt so that analogy is way off. Being realistic not everyone can toss out dough even if they want to or like to knowing there are others factors to consider. I bought over time alot of HDD to keep as spare as they are cheaper as mention and only til SSD drops to HDD prices then I will go with SSD and not til then and that is going to be sometime before that happens.

 

Makes me want to skip over the post, but to each their own.

 

Ok. Cloud storage is way too slow and unreliable for me. Most people I know don't have massive amounts of storage either. Maybe just their internal drive and a large 1 or 2TB external. When they run out of space, they just delete the least important things they have on there.

This isn't the least bit true. Both mechanical and solid state drives are more reliable than they were in the past, but neither technology is more reliable than the other. SSD's were clearly a lot less reliable than mechanical drives for a while. I guess now they are on-par?

We must really be from different worlds if spending 500 dollars on a drive is "chump change." I guess we all just have different priorities. But even if I had that much money to spend on a drive, I would buy whatever had more storage space.

My dad was just telling me about the new workstations his department got recently. Top of the line from Dell, about $10,000 each, and replaced every 2+ years. Their only hard drives are two 500GB mechanical drives in RAID 1. So clearly performance isn't bound by the hard drive.

 

I voted for both since I have both. I appreciate the speed of the 256 gb samsung 830 ($140 at the time, so ~.55/GB) in my old gateway. I got in a last ditch attempt, along with some other measures, to restore it to gaming capacity. Sadly, I was unsuccessful, but it has made that particular computer into a very speedy home theater/server of sorts.

The hitachi 1 tb 7200 rpm ($80, so .08/GB) drawing main duty in my sager is also quite impressive. Speedy and capacious, almost able to hold my entire steam profile of games. It takes about 20 seconds longer to start up compared to the samsung. File transfers are noticeably slower, but noticeable only in the respect that I know it is slower because I am comparing it to the SSD.

Two reasons I haven't switched my main gaming system over to SSD are price and performance. I can see the real world benefit of SSDs on the professional side, but I cannot personally justify the price for my own use on the consumer side. At $300/TB, I'm in. Until that price point, I can wait an extra 10 seconds. The samsung evo 1tb looks awesome, but not at $500-$600.

One last opinion on the reliability factor. SSDs have a profound benefit in no moving parts, making them able to withstand physical impact much better. 7200 rpm HDDs have been in use for at least a decade ( I remember doing a system build in college using a 7200rpm Maxtor....HA). There was a recent study done by Backblaze analyzing over 27,000 hdds. I am sure it's been posted and talked about on the forum elsewhere, but here's the link anyway. Backblaze Blog » How long do disk drives last?

My point is we pretty much know what to expect long term from HDDs. SSDs simply haven't been around that long yet. While their speed is certainly impressive, and the capacities are catching up, I'll be relying on good old fashioned platters until the prices come down to below $.25/GB and storage capacity is beyond 1TB. I imagine we aren't too far away from that.

 

My parent's house has 50 mbps fiber connection, and I've never experienced downtime with Cloud, so YMMV.

If you constantly move your laptop around while it is on, you'll kill your hard drive really quick. And with my ultraportable tablets, I would be in tablet mode a decent while drawing, which requires movement of the computer = dead HDD. Try moving your laptop around while copying data, give it a few shakes. Guarantee your HDD will die alot quicker vs sitting on a desk.

Again, I don't view money as the be all, end all. When I bought my 500 GB SSD, 330 was a price I was willing to pay to put a large SSD drive in my laptop. If I needed a 1 TB SSD, I would gladly shell out 500-600 for it into a laptop (like video editing on the go). If you need it, you need it. If I needed a 3000 dollar laptop, I would get it.

Depends what the workstations are used for. Many corporations don't buy SSDs as it is the bottom line, aka contract and they must buy for an entire department. And RAID 1 is redundancy...so clearly they care about the data over performance.

 

I've got one of each and it works well for me. I don't really trust hybrid drives - feels like twice the failure modes without twice the benefit.


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Not everyone is lucky enough to sit on a 50Mbps, you know...FTTH envy kicking in...

No argument from me on that one. However, different people have varying priorities and budgets.

And which corporation doesn't?

The day that someone figures out a foolproof way of rescuing data from a dead SSD will be the day that spinning drives start following the route of the dinosaurs and dodo birds.

We're not there yet.

 

I had to vote both, in honesty it is both on my laptops that can take 2 drives and SSD only in those that can not ( which are few ). the reason is simple, I need the speed SSD's offer for OS and applications AND I need the vast storage that a mechanical drive can offer me for data usage, I could go all out on 1T SSD's but for many data purposes it is not necessary.

In my external storage arrays and NAS units I exclusively use mechanical drives as it is neither cost effective nor practical to run massive SSD RAIDS when I can configure out with arrays of 3T or 4T mechanical drives in a RAID 10 configuration

 

My parents do too; the fastest internet package offered by Verizon Fios, which I'm pretty sure is 50Mbps. At my apartment in Shanghai I only have a 40Mbps fiber optic line. Big deal. But outside the home? No or slow internet access? In China, where I live, cloud storage is blocked, not that I would use it anyway. My hard drives are faster than 50Mbps. I also don't need to worry about trusting anyone other than myself with my data.

I just picked up my laptop and shook it violently. No problems. And like I said before, a few days ago my backup laptop fell off the table onto the hardwood floor while it was transferring data and it never skipped a beat. A lot of people seem to think mechanical drives are a lot more fragile than they really are. Also, you don't seem to understand how a motion can hurt a mechanical drive, which is the heads crashing into the platter. Moving your computer around isn't going to do anything.... It can take a lot of G's, even when operating. While the drive is operational Hard drives, especially 2.5" ones, are always getting better with this anyway.

Come on, yesterday everyone was scared of SSD's randomly dying. Today it is that HDD's are super fragile? Please. They both have different quirks with their reliability, but are about the same. Failure rates are quite low in either case.

I'm neither miserly nor poor. As long as money isn't unlimited, I can think of a thousand things I would rather spend my money on than a 1TB SSD. A 1TB SSD is not a need but a want. You and I clearly want different things. Computers used to be my main hobby and I was ordering something new from newegg every week. Now, spending money on computers ranks pretty low in ways I want to spend my disposable income.

These are $10,000 desktop workstations for each employee. Performance IS the bottom line.

 

This is interesting, read this the other day:

Backblaze data shows Hitachi and Seagate as most and least reliable hard drives, respectively - TechSpot

Looks to me like spinning platters are not that reliable (Annual Failure Rate Info), certainly not the Seagate variety (which are also the most common). Didn't bother looking for similar information amoungst SSD's, but I would imagine that SSDs don't have such a high annual failure rate.

On the subject of SSDs wearing out over time, due to only a limited number of possible writes, most users won't get anywhere near this. My little SSD will last about 74 yrs according to my calculations based on the "Percentage of Rated Lifetime Used" displayed with HWInfo - and mine's just a little 64GB SSD, and the smaller the SSD the shorter the life in general due to this limited write phenomenon.

Combine all of the above with the increased speed & performance you get with SSDs, then really the only consideration for most usage scenarios would be cost effectiveness.

 

I've known (from my own direct experiences) that Hitachi drives are the crème de la crème of HDD's and Seagate is a distant, red headed step child with regards to reliable storage.

Now;we have the data to back it up.

As for SSD's - their failure rates are still higher than HDD's as a whole - but I don't have the time right now to find that data.

 

Awww, what's wrong with the red heads, they gotta get some love!

Surprised about the SSD failure rates that you talk about in comparison to HDD failure rates. I did a quick google just now and came up with 2 links supporting SSD having lower annual failure rates:

SSDs do die, as Linus Torvalds just discovered - Computerworld

In the one above Ryan Chien, an SSD and storage analyst with IHS's Electronics & Media division (no idea of his credibility), said: "From the data I've seen, client SSD annual failure rates under warranty tend to be around 1.5%, while HDDs are near 5%,"

And a report from Toms Hardware intimated (because they were return rates & not necessarily failure rates) that SSDs are appearing more reliable than HDDs here:
A Peek Into SSD Reliability - Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive?

I don't know, but it seems to me that SSDs are more reliable, which will be amplified in mobile usage due to the all the movement which is not healthy for spinning platters.

 

Yeah; red heads are cool.

I agree SSD's are more durable - especially in mobile systems - but reliable?

I too want to see current numbers first.

As for the 1.5% and 5% failure rates for SSD's and HDD's respectively - I guess that report was including a lot of WD drives (if they mirrored what BackBlaze reports).

 

I wish I had the unlimited money some of you have to just buy a 1tb SSD for $500-600 but I prefer to use my money for something else besides computer parts. I use my money to invest back into my business and to save away. I save at least 30% of every month's profits for my future. Even though I make very good money I still dont buy my laptops new, I buy them used. I wait for the perfect moment when someone is selling at a good deal. I bought my Alienware m18x r2 for $1700 only because it has a small damage on the side so nobody wanted it. So I snatched it up. I got my HP laptop for only $419 with 2.5 years remaining on the warranty, out of 3.

My business laptop, a HP 8460p comes with a intel x-25 160gb SSD. I bought that SSD some years ago for around $400. I bought it because I sell on ebay and have a lot of user accounts that I need to switch between. That extra speed saves me a lot of time. So for me that SSD was a business need (not a want), so I wrote it off on my taxes. I can always buy a 1tb SSD and write it off as a business expense but I'm not.

I use both, SSDs and mechanical HDs but I prefer to go with mechanical HDs for the better space/$ ratio. My alienware has 3 1tb HDs and a 256gb SSD msata. I did some trades for the msata SSD. I store the OS and some games on it. The rest of the games and movies go and a raid 0 set up.

 

There is some overlap between durability & reliability, they're not mutually exclusive.

 

I use both in my laptop. Intense video editing and file manipulation, VM work, etc. is not meant to be done on SSD's period, SSD=/=Writes. Anyways, my System SSD is only a mediocre 24GB, but i am really good at slimming down Windows

But i am by no means a "computer elitist", right now my current desktop has no SSD's. 2x7200RPM Raid 0 is fast enough for me

Sadly, this thread is a rich people vs poor people thread. As much as i'd love a 600$ SSD, it costs nearly as much as my laptop in the first place, and i'd rather invest the money into upgrades like CPU/GPU...

 

Oh, do I smell a class war?

Anyway, my server has an SSD in it, if flash drives count.

 

Nobody has unlimited money. Nobody.

The Alienware m18x r2 for $1700 that you consider a good deal I wouldn't pay $1.70 for. We each make our choice and that's all there is to it.

I don't understand the point of your post - but it's okay; maybe someone else does.

No, they're not mutually exclusive - but in the mobile domain an SSD's durability is indisputable. While a HDD's reliability is just as high as an SSD's if it is taken proper care of while in operation.

But high durability while in use doesn't necessarily mean better reliability either.

 

Head on over to dictionary.com and look up the word "hyperbole." Expand your knowledge. Maybe you'll learn something.

 

Well QingDao, you keep with using your HDD. I don't see why you make such a thread if you are such a mechanical hard drive fanatic, it seems like for you SSDs don't suit your lifestyle, then why bother posting about it? I've seen hard drives die with a simple 6 inch drop onto carpet.

 

IMO, anyone not using an SSD is missing out big time.

You can find great 128-256GB SSDs for $100-200 - that's not expensive by any means considering an SSD will make any laptop *fast*, no matter what processor or RAM it has.

You can upgrade to an SSD today, and still use it 5 years from now in another laptop (excluding failures of course, but HDDs fail just as often).

You don't need 1TB, 128GB + a secondary hard drive is plenty enough for most people.

 

Yeah, I think that's the perfect configuration if you've got two hard drive bays in your laptop.