It’s all the time an odd second saying goodbye to a expertise you’ve used without end, and I now discover myself waving farewell to a different one: the common-or-garden spinning-platter laborious drive.
Sure, I’ve been utilizing SSDs for near 15 years for my working system and gaming drives, and SSDs are obviously superior for performance and durability. But for a really very long time, value and capability have been in opposition to them and firmly in favor of conventional laborious drives.
I believe it’s time to name it—I don’t want a tough drive in my major PC anymore, and neither do you. Here’s why you must make the swap.
Why I stayed caught on my HDD
I first began constructing and dealing on PCs within the early ’00s, and again then laborious drives had been a must have element. They had been the one strategy to retailer information in a shopper PC—outdoors of crazy RAM drives—and I often rocked a pair of them: a quick drive for the working system and video games, and one other cheaper one for longer-term storage.
Cut to a couple years later after I began testing SSDs and the longer term was out of the blue clear: HDDs for gaming were done. While I nonetheless have some pals I’ve but to persuade of this, the writing has been on the wall for a protracted, lengthy, very long time. SSDs outperform HDDs by a protracted shot.
Western Digital
But whilst fortunate as I used to be—I’d been getting despatched SSDs for testing—I nonetheless by no means used an SSD as my massive backup storage drive choice. I nonetheless solely trusted laborious drives with my treasured household pictures and expansive collections of (legally) ripped motion pictures and TV exhibits. Because regardless that SSDs had been quicker, HDDs were more reliable for years-long storage.
And that’s the way it stayed for over a decade. I stored including newer, quicker SSDs to the purpose the place I now have a hodge-podge assortment of NVMe and SATA drives cluttering up my rig, with my Steam library stretched throughout 10+ TBs of super-fast SSD storage. All the whereas, within the background, I had my lone laborious drive retaining cost of my essential information. It too was changed over time, however all the time remained an HDD.
But in mid-2025, it’s time to hold up its hat. With a brand new 4TB SSD, I’ve ended the longest reign of any PC element sort I’ve ever used.
The value of a large-capacity SSD
SSDs are nonetheless dearer than HDDs. Not as dramatically as they as soon as had been, however dearer nonetheless. A 1TB laborious drive will value you round $35 whereas a 1TB NVMe SSD about $50. A 2TB HDD is round $65 whereas a 2TB NVMe SSD begins round $90.
The 4TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD that I changed is about $85 new right now whereas you may get one thing just like the 4TB Crucial P3 Plus NVMe SSD for $220 or the 4TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe SSD for $250. So, yeah, on a GB-for-GB degree, the laborious drive is way more economical. And if you rise up into the actually huge capacities (assume 20+ TBs), SSDs don’t even have comparable alternate options presently.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
But let’s be actual right here. How a lot did you spend in your final graphics card improve? How a lot in your gaming PC as an entire? Is the pace distinction between an SSD and HDD actually price $150 or so?
Because imagine me, whilst you don’t want cutting-edge efficiency to retailer your loved ones pictures and video collections, you’ll positively discover the day-to-day benefit of a (much) faster drive. SSDs aren’t simply good at launching video games rapidly, but additionally at studying information with out lag—it doesn’t matter what file it’s or what number of you’re attempting to learn without delay.
Don’t sniff on the efficiency distinction
When you’re utilizing a pc all day every single day, each second issues. It all provides up, particularly when it takes without end to launch apps, load information, and switch information from drive to drive. Who has time to waste?
I’ve tens of 1000’s of pictures from through the years, and my Plex media library chugs I scroll via pictures from years in the past. It solely takes a number of seconds right here and there, however when it occurs each time I load a brand new web page or each time a video buffers, it’s an actual ache.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
After switching over to an SSD, these waits are largely non-existent. It could hitch every now and then on spectacularly massive information, however the general expertise is smoother and feels extra responsive. With an SSD, my library is working at my pace, not the opposite method round.
The identical goes for including new information to the drive, too. Where as soon as backing up my cellphone with a number of thousand photos took many minutes, now it’s extra like a number of seconds. That’s true for backing up normally, too. Where beforehand I used to be caught to the glacial write pace of my laborious drive, now I can transfer complete catalogs of outdated work paperwork and different essential information over to a brand new drive close to instantaneously.
HDDs nonetheless last more… in all probability
Outside of the ever-shrinking value disparity between laborious drives and SSDs, there’s one space the place laborious drives nonetheless maintain a bonus.
I’m speaking longevity. Hard drives have been clearly proven to function for years, and even a long time, with out information degradation. Backblaze’s annual drive stats paint a powerful image of most HDD fashions, that they will function at excessive capability for lengthy intervals of time with out failing.
SSDs don’t have the identical pedigree, however they will nonetheless last a long time before needing to be replaced. The newest fashions have Terabytes Written (TBW) scores within the a whole bunch and even 1000’s of terabytes, to allow them to be written to over and over with out concern of diminished drive efficiency or instability when studying/writing information. In actuality, most of us aren’t going to make use of up that many write cycles.
And it’s not like HDDs are immune from put on and tear. While typical knowledge suggests {that a} laborious drive can run for 5 to 10 years with light-to-moderate use, laborious drive producers usually solely supply warranties of two to 3 years. Professional laborious drives get about 5 years—and SSDs get about the identical. For most shoppers, 3 to 5 years is a lot.
There’s one massive caveat right here, although. When it involves archiving information, or storing information in a drive that’s powered off for a very long time, then laborious drives completely take the cake. Since SSDs retailer information electronically moderately than magnetically, the info itself can degrade if the SSD isn’t powered on for a long time. Hard drives don’t undergo that situation.
If you’re saving information offline in a drawer someplace, then use a tough drive. Otherwise, you’ll profit from utilizing an SSD.
I’m retaining my laborious drive, by the way in which
Main working system drives? Replace them with SSDs. Secondary storage drives that see day-to-day exercise? Make ’em SSDs. Media streaming drives for issues like Plex? That’s proper. SSDs! They simply take advantage of sense in practically all eventualities.
But that doesn’t imply I’m tossing the HDD I changed. It doesn’t should go within the bin simply because it’s ageing or gradual. A tough drive is the higher alternative if you want excessive capacities or long-term offline storage, and the latter is what I’m going to make use of it for.
The HDD is useful for a 3-2-1 backup strategy: 3 copies of your information on 2 totally different media, with 1 of these copies saved remotely off-site. The laborious drive kinds a part of my long-term storage design.
So you may stay on somewhat longer, my outdated laborious drive. You’ll be buried even additional away from relevance and I hope to by no means name on you—but when I do, I do know you’ll be there to avoid wasting my butt.
Further studying: Why everyone should have a NAS drive