Types of hard drives: SATA vs. SSD vs. NVMe

Types of hard drives: SATA vs. SSD vs. NVMe

When you talk about computer memory, you're talking about hard drives. These devices contain all of your computer's data, from the operating system files that control your device to important work documents that you can't afford to lose in the game you start relaxing at the end of the day. All of this is stored on your hard drive, so you'll want to make sure you get the right type of hard drive for whatever you're planning to do.

There are three different types of hard drives: SATA, SSD and NVMe. In this article, you will learn more about each type and their strengths and weaknesses. Whether you're buying or building a new PC, or looking to upgrade your current PC, this should help you decide between the two.

What is a hard drive and what do I need it for?
The hard drive is the component that stores your data. The term "hard drive" is often abbreviated to "HDD". There are several reasons you might want to buy one:

You are out of space on your current hard drive and need a larger one

You find that opening documents or exporting large files like videos takes a long time

You are building a new PC from scratch

Whatever the situation, understanding why you want or need a new device will help you know what you want and need. Once you figure that out, it's time to learn more about the different types of hard drives and the trade-offs between them.

SATA drives
Introduced in 2003, SATA (or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) is the standard interface for most desktop and laptop hard drives. They are known as SATA hard drives, but they are actually hard drives with spinning platters and a moving needle that writes data to consecutive sectors on each platter. SATA hard drives are incredibly fast compared to their predecessor, the PATA hard drive, and can write to the drive at speeds of 600 MB/s with an interface rate of 6 Gb/s.

A single drive can range in size from 500GB to 16TB and is available at a lower price point than any of the other drive types discussed here. They're good drives if you need a lot of cheap storage and don't need extremely high reads or writes. Because data is physically written to a hard drive, it can also become fragmented, which means different sectors can be spread across different areas of the hard drive, slowing down the hard drive. They're also prone to sudden shocks as there are moving parts in each unit, making them a poor choice for laptops.

Advantage:
Cheap

Large disk sizes

Disadvantages:
Not good for laptops.

Requires regular defragmentation

SSD hard drives
SSD stands for Solid State Drive. These hard drives have no moving parts. Instead, all data is stored in non-volatile flash memory. This means there are no needles to move to read or write data, and they're significantly faster than SATA drives. It's difficult to find an exact speed as it varies by manufacturer and form factor, but even lower-performing drives are comparable to SATA drives.

The downside is that these devices are significantly more expensive and don't come in as many sizes. SSD drives range in size from around 120GB to 2TB and cost 2 to 4 times the price of a SATA hard drive of the same size. Because there are no moving parts, these drives are also much more durable, and there are form factors specifically designed for laptops, making them ideal for storage on the go.

Advantage:
Quickly

More durable, especially for laptops.

Disadvantages:
More expensive than SATA drives

Smaller disk sizes

NVMe
Released in 2013, Non-Volatile Memory Express or NVMe is a type of SSD that plugs into a PCI Express (PCIe) slot on a motherboard. These slots were originally designed for graphics cards, so they're incredibly fast. Speeds on NVMe drives can reach an interface rate of 32 Gb/s with a throughput of 3.9 Gb/s. This can be very useful if you are doing something that requires a lot of hard drive performance, such as B. Gaming or high-resolution video editing.

As fast as they are, NVMs have some drawbacks. First of all, they are only available on desktop PCs and are very expensive. Although they can be used as secondary drives, you must install your operating system on them to use their full potential. Most biographies below
Western Digital WD30EZRX