SSD or HDD?

I've never used an SSD in my life, I've always used HDDs, of varying qualities.
My friends have said for years SSDs are faster and more reliable.
But I've seen a lot of posts here saying it is actually negligible, and research I have done on the topic just has people say "SSDs are best" without much explanation.
Well Sup Forums, which is better, and why?

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Go get an SSD, user.
You won't regret it

Faster. More reliable. More expensive.
People generally put their OS and important games on one SSD, and clog the other masses of unimportant garbage on their HDD.
It's worth it. Load times are VERY FAST. The computer boots VERY FAST. Get one, even if it's small, for your OS.

They aren't more reliable at all.

HDDs are the bottleneck of 95% of PCs. Putting your OS on an SSD will remove that bottleneck.

Where have you been the last 3 years. They didn't used to be more reliable, they are now.

From my personal experience, having a separate SSD for your OS makes a world of difference and installing normal programs to the HDD. In my desktop, it cut the boot and load times in half at worst.

5400rpm vs 7200rpm HDD????
Pls I am brainlet

I don't sit at my desk to boot, I turn it on and do other things, not to mention I don't reboot often.

So why consider an SSD if you don't care about the speed?

Asking if it's worth it, I was specifying when it comes to boots it probably wouldn't make a difference.
They obviously affect more than boots.

Don't you launch big programs too? Don't you use hibernation?

Hell no.
They're even worse than the first SLC iterations.
I work refurb at a comapny and get to see all the reject drives we pass.
TLC and MLC for d a y s.

SSDs fail just as often and just as horribly as HDDs, they have higher sequential and orders of magnitude better random I/O.

Most people here use linux which allows for RAM caching so a HDD is a perfectly good choice once it has had time to warm the caches and downtime to fetch read ahead.


7200 is inherently less stable than 5400 but better random I/O.
If you use windows you will need better random I/O, if not stick with 5400s.

most people here use linux? since when?

So if I'm putting a new HDD in a ThinkPad that will be moved and dropped while running, and I plan on dual booting I should get a 5400rpm?
There's such a limited selection of 7200rpm drives that are 2.5" 7mm

Absolutely, the point I was making is if you separate OS and data, you get the largest speed gain rather than bottlenecking yourself to loading from one drive. Either way, large gain on anything you do at the expense of price.

Also I'd consider them less reliable as they can just quit without warning and are non-recoverable while HDDs slow down or have telling signs to their impending demise.

tl;dr - Great performance hardware. Not great long-term reliability. Expensive. If you don't want fast, don't bother.

i rented a vps thats hosted on an SSD, and immediately after using it i notices shit installs faster, updates faster, everything is just faster. I have also only used HDD's all my life. I'm considering grabbing an SSD in the future at some point when they become cheaper. That damn vps is like butter.

>even considering mechanical death traps for data storage
>in 2017
gonna buy some more cache while you're at it, old fucks?

Get two 5400 RPMs and mirror them with your BTRFS, LVM, ZFS, what-have-you.
Virtualize your 2nd boot in KVM.

Covers all of your bases.

Don't forget to buy used HDDs to get the bottom of the bathtub curve and check the SMART values with a microscope. Don't be afraid to send them back if they're shit and use mismatched brands, preferably so they fail under slight different circumstances.

It's not just about boot times, your OS will be more responsive. Linux isn't as bad, but if you're using Windows an SSD is basically required.

I believe all the regulars to be gentoomen that hold the decent threads but most of the front page

It makes a pretty big difference with normal use, not having to wait a few seconds for a drive to spin up is really nice and it makes your computer feel a whole lot more response. It just makes everything feel faster and I'd say its the most important upgrade you can make.

The only real downside is the lack of storage but you can always get another mechanical drive for movies/etc if you're the type to hoard them.

Or end up spending a fortune on large SSDs. Yes, multiple.

Bcachefs.

4tb hdd + memory accelerator

An ssd has become a must for me now. Any system without the os running on an ssd feels unusable to me now. user, get an ssd and you will not regret it.

SSDs are faster with non-sequential reads and no spinup times. good for an OS drive. bad for your data if it changes a lot. While an SSD can last longer if not re-written a lot, it has way lower write cycles than an HDD. If your the type to constantly be downlaoding and deleting, or you run databases, HDDs may be more optimal. For putting your kernel and programs on however SSDs are great.

SSDs are more than fine now. Back when they were new, they had some issues. I put SSDs in everything, feels good man. Have HDDs for big shit (games/movies/music collection)

fuck off newfag cancer

I never noticed a huge difference going from a fast hdd to ssd. I never turn off my pc though so the boot times don't affect me.

an SSD on your OS will make your life better in every way.

It's less required for secondary storage, but still a clear benefit over HDD. The only real reason why you'd choose HDD over SSD is price.

>
>Hell no.
>They're even worse than the first SLC iterations.
>I work refurb at a comapny and get to see all the reject drives we pass.
>TLC and MLC for d a y s.
>SSDs fail just as often and just as horribly as HDDs, they have higher sequential and orders of magnitude better random I/O.


I thought when ssd fails, you can still read data from it? Is that not true?

>Most people here use linux which allows for RAM caching so a HDD is a perfectly good choice once it has had time to warm the caches and downtime to fetch read ahead.
>
>7200 is inherently less stable than 5400 but better random I/O.
>If you use windows you will need better random I/O, if not stick with 5400s.

Pic unrelated

You only need one for your OS if you're using windows.
Same goes for "silent" HDDs. Mechanical drives only make noticeable noise if you're using windows.

In a perfect world SSDs would only fail through write cycles.
This is not a perfect world.

>I thought when ssd fails, you can still read data from it? Is that not true?
Some work this way, but again, Windows won't be able to recover from this unlike a Linux system would.

>But I've seen a lot of posts here saying it is actually negligible

It is... I installed an SSD on my T520 and it only made everything twice as fast... Maybe maxium a 400% improvement, but nothing more. But it was significantly better than installing more RAM and upgrading the CPU. Because on computers without an SSD then the HDD is the main bottleneck.

SSDs are a meme, as long as you don't constantly turn on and off your computer, you're fine with an hdd.

People who buy an ssd on a build instead of putting the money on a better cpu or gpu should be lined up and shot.

I bought a 60GB SSD for like $200 once they first appeared on the market and even then I thought it was worth it, it really made a big difference. Nowadays they are pretty much obligatory.

Considering how cheap even a basic one, like 120GBs for as low as $40 (microcenter.com/product/485877/120GB_SATA_III_6Gb-s_25_Internal_Solid_State_Drive) they are a must have for modern systems.

It's not just boot time, its overall stability. Everything will feel snappier with the OS on a SSD, from opening a file window to browsing the web. It's one of those, once you try it you can never go back sort of things.

Just do a combo, big of an SSD as you can afford, then a nice size quality HDD to offload larger things and some programs if necessary.

I have only had one SSD fail on me after 9/10 years of constant use, and that was on my bottom of the barrel el cheapo SSD. Can't say the same for HDDs.

>7200 is inherently less stable than 5400 but better random I/O.
Either you're stuck in 2008 or you're just here to fuck with people.

Ssd are not more reliable. They fail without warning and have a limited number of writes. No one uses ssd for cold storage. I run my os on an ssd and keep on important stuff in a hard drive that i back up to two other hard drives that are stored elsewhere

>keep on important stuff in a hard drive that i back up to two other hard drives that are stored elsewhere
Why don't you just use a cloud service?

Yes they have a limited number of rewrites, in the 100s of TBs range.

Unless you're doing enterprise grade workloads, I don't think you'll EVER hit that limit.

Also you're supposed to keep backups of important documents, on both an outside backup like cloud or personal server storage and on hand backups like spare drives and such.

No. If you had $100 to spend, it would be far better to buy a SSD than put it into your CPU or GPU.

this, plus anyone who falls for the faster ram meme