SSD Power Consumption
Why more and more people are choosing SSD instead of HDD?
With the prices of solid-state drives (SSDs) going down, more and more people are switching from their trusty old hard disk drives (HDDs) to SSDs. Here are the most common reasons why people make the switch:
Consistent Performance – Hard disk drives tend to slow down over time because of the fragmentation happening within the spinning platters. Solid-state drives have a different mechanism of writing and reading files, which doesn’t slow down the drive over time. This means that the speed of a solid-state drive the first time you buy it will be pretty much the same 5-10 years after.
Much less heat is produced by SSD compared to HDD
Related Articles:
Fastest SSD`s – Top 3 list
Best SSD`s For Gaming
Best SSD For MacBook Pro
Best SSD – Ultimate Buying Guide
OCZ Infographics – SSD vs HDD
High read and write speeds – Hard disk drives contain a bunch of spinning platters that need certain parts of them read. This means that the speed of reading and writing stuff in a hard drive is limited by how fast the platters spin, how efficiently the data is arranged, and how quickly the reading head goes to the correct part of the platters. Solid state drives, on the other hand, are pretty much like flash drives – they don’t contain moving parts and are therefore not at the mercy of moving mechanical parts when it comes to writing or reading files.
Sturdy – When you drop a hard drive while it’s running, chances are the computer will freeze or cause a read/write error. This is because the head that reads information from the spinning platters could misread or even destroy your data because of sudden movement or impact. Solid state drives have no such problems and will continue to work even in extremely bumpy rides.
On average laptop`s battery will last 40% longer with SSD. If it was 2 hours with HDD then it would be almost 4 hours with SSD.
So far, a lot of people only know these three benefits of SSDs. There is, however, one more aspect that makes SSDs shine that not a lot of people have looked into: SSD Power Consumption. SSD power consumption turns out to be significantly lower than HDD power consumption. Here’s what that would mean for people who are contemplating on switching to SSD:
Lower electricity bill – For servers or gaming desktop computers, the electricity bill could easily skyrocket from the overpowered, overworked CPU, GPU, RAM, and hard drive. Interestingly, you can reduce the power consumption of the first three components mentioned by sacrificing performance. For the hard drive, however, switching from HDD to SSD actually saves you energy while boosting performance because of the significantly lower SSD power consumption but exponentially higher SSD read and write rates.
Longer battery life – People who use laptops often do not know how much energy their laptops consume just to spin the platters of their hard drives and frantically jump the read/write head from one place to another. Because SSDs don’t have spinning platters and instead have stable electronic chips, SSD power consumption is significantly lower and will of course lead to a much longer battery life.
Longer Life – The amount of heat produced is directly proportional to the amount of power consumed. Because SSD power consumptionis quite low, the life span of the drive and the surrounding parts will be much longer than that of an HDD.
Low SSD power consumption is an important aspect one should not overlook when looking for an upgrade or replacement hard drive. Low SSD power consumption not only benefits us, but also the environment, which is why SSDs are good investments.
