HDD and SSD Drives - Difference Between Them Explained

When purchasing a VPS or Dedicated server plan at Hostwinds, you have a choice between using HDD or SSD drives. For faster performance, we recommend using SSD drives. This guide will help understand the difference between these two types of drives that we offer.

What Is The Difference Between an HDD Drive And An SSD Drive?

Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

It uses multiple spinning platters with a moving mechanical arm that accesses different parts of the platters to read and write the data. Similar to an old fashion record player, although the HDD moves its arm much much faster.

HDD drives have been in use for decades and are still the preferred drive when storing large amounts of data inexpensively.

Pros

Cheapest storage

Cons

Not nearly as fast or responsive as an SSD

Solid State Drive (SSD)

It uses stacks of integrated circuits to store the data and has no moving parts. As a result, SSD drives use less power, run cooler, are lighter weight, and are much faster than the older mechanical HDD drives.

SSD drives are a great evolutionary step in computer technology, and their use in PCs, laptops, servers and other comparable devices has become widespread in the past decade.

Pros

Files open up to 30% faster
Disk read/writes are 4x faster or more

Cons

More expensive