Do We Really Still Need Hard Drives in Today's Computers?
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- See whether or not it's still worth using a hard drive in today's modern computers. We now have SSDs that are much faster. So is there really any need to continue using hard drives today?
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I swear i love these light and non-aggressive informational videos. The calm and collected presentations. Not digging too deep into particular topics.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy them!
@@EasyPcRepairs Dave my friend, what about making a basic light video about the evolution of the VGA bus interfaces and some data and information around them?
You must be a mind reader. I have a plan to do that video soon(ish).
@@EasyPcRepairs perfect my friend. I'm looking forward to your next project. Thank you my friend.
You're very welcome!
His, or should I say, your voice and tone is so lovely, it's unseen at this day and age to be so slow, chill, no hurry, we got time
Thank you!
I think an important point you missed is reliability. My previous computer is 12 years old with a WD black, never had any issues with it. Computer before that also went 10 years without issues. I'm sure I'm pretty lucky, but I don't think my current NVMe will have such a lifespan.
10 years and 12 years without issues is very good. I have seen many older computers that are still working today with a hard drive installed. But I've also seen many that fail after 5 years. So I think some luck is involved with hard drives. But like you say, if you have a good one, it can last for a long time.
Well it depends on how much you write on your SSD. If you don't write much then a typical modern SSD with hundreds or thousands of TBW will probably last far longer than an HDD.
I watched this vid for 3 minutes without realizing this isn't an ASMR channel lol I'm loving it
also my WD blue (warranty-replacement HDD after the original died in 2 weeks) DIED last week after 6 months of usage, seriously ridiculous. I gave up on that model 100% I don't even want to contact WD again for the warranty
Which 1TB-2TB HDD model/brand would you reccomend? I'm gonna use it mostly to backup my files and store games
(I know SDDs are better overall but I live in a 3rd world hole and they are *REALLY* expensive here, so unfortunately I have to stick to HDDs)
awesome video my dude, hope all is well
Western Digital drives are usually good so I feel you've been unlucky. I used to get my WD drives from one supplier, but the drives would often be faulty. I switched suppliers and ever since then, my WD drive have all been good. Anyway, if you've really had enough of WD, Seagate is a good brand for hard drives.
I'll echo Dave's comments on WD, mine are still kicking after years of service. You do need to pay attention to the model though, because the different colours dictate the specs. WD "green" drives for example are like an "eco" spec that use less power but also tend to be slower.
My personal go-to HDD manufacturers are Seagate and Samsung, as they tend to offer quality products at a competitive price.
Edit: I'd also consider going bigger than 1-2GB. As per Dave's findings, the cost/TB drops fairly rapidly the bigger you go with HDDs.
My kryptonite was Seagate. When it failed, it failed at the very worse time. The luckiest drive I had so far was Samsung, and then Seagate bought the division, the bastard.
I use an NVME for OS and most programs. But I use a hard drive for videos, older games like WoW and Path of Exile and GOG games and also for BACKUP.
Because when a HDD goes, there's warning it is starting to fail. When an SSD or NVME goes it just suddenly stops working.
You're a joy to listen to, friend. Fantastic video thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
My pleasure, glad you liked the video.
I love watching each of your videos, I learn a lot with every golden tip you give.
excellent job 👏
Thank you! I'm happy to hear that!
Thanks - I always enjoy your presentation style
Thank you!
I tend to trust HDDs more than any type of flash memory with my data. I still have some HDDs that are ten, even 20+ years old, still holding data, still being used on a daily basis. Granted my first SATA SSD I ever bought in 2015 is still alive today, eight years later, I trust HDDs more when it comes to writing data very often. Although regular maintenance and upkeep is required, such as defragmentation, HDDs are still very useful, especially for their cost-per-gigabyte ratio, and while SSDs have significantly come down in price, you can't beat a 5TB HDD for less than $100.
Yes, the prices of hard drives are very good in comparison. I very much believe that hard drives still have a place in today's computers.
Great video and very informative. I do a combo of nvme for os/software and hard disk for storage. Glad you are making videos more often now this helps a lot of people.
Thank you! I'm glad to be back again!
Love these videos, informative and so wonderfully narrated, thank you.
Glad you like them!
A couple of SSD advantages you missed. Random access and seek times are almost nothing - the location of data in the drive doesn’t affect latency and defragmentation isn’t needed i.e., they are more responsive. Secondly they use orders of magnitude less power which for laptops and portable devices is a big deal meaning they can meaningfully improve battery life.
I just ordered the exact drive at 1:25 for my vintage 2015 PC. I’ve held off for years, but at triple the speed and $50, and unknown HDD lifespan, I finally gave on.
Sounds like a good idea!
Great video. I run an Nvme as my main, 2 ssds as secondaries, and a 4tb HDD as my backup. Really happy with my setup.
That sounds like a very good setup!
You forgot about power requirements.
HDDs are still meaningful. I had one machine with two HDDs that lasted 13 years. My next machine with an HDD lasted 16 years. By comparison, the SSD died within about 5 years. The speed factor is impressive, sure, but reliability is not a trivial requirement. Silent hard drives? My game is banging away, game sprites are screaming, and game bombs are going off in my headphones. What disk noise was that? Your point about laptops and fragility is valid.
I love these videos! Your the reason why I know a lot about computers!!!
Thank you! I'm glad my videos are being helpful to you.
depends on what you like i love desktop sata drives
thanks for this video, Tom, answered this question just in time since my cat and I were shopping for a new SSD
Glad I could help!
In the desktop I run a cheap but complex storage solution. But first I use Ubuntu (Linux) as OS and I tend to use computers till they are 10 years old. My main hobby is collecting old and new OSes in Virtualbox Virtual Machines (VM), so I have e.g. all Windows OSes from Windows 1.04 (1987) till Windows 11 Pro (2023). My storage is a mix of all 3 solution, my 12 most frequently used VMs run from a 512GB nvme-SSD (3400/2300MB/s), all other VMs and all my data are stored on a new 2TB HDD (192MB/s), but that HDD is supported by a 128GB sata-SSD as cache for the HDD (SSD: 550MB/s & no disk-arm moves).
More details! I use the OpenZFS file system, that is used often by servers. All my storage and all my caches are lz4 compressed, almost doubling the effective sizes! The storage hierarchy is 4GB memory cache (L1ARC); 128GB SSD cache (L2ARC) and 2TB HDD, The 512GB nvme-SSD also uses the 4GB memory cache. The hit rate for the memory cache is 99%, so 99 of 100 read operations are done from memory. It is like running the VM from a RAM drive :)
Typical boot times from nvme-SSD for a Linux OS is 10 seconds. The fastest Xubuntu boots in 7 seconds. Windows XP, still in use almost daily, boots in 25 seconds. Typical Linux boot times from the HDD/SSD chain are ~25 seconds, while the reboots occur from memory cache in ~8 seconds. For Windows 10/11 the boot times are not very much different for nvme and hdd/ssd, they are between 40 and 60 seconds. Basically my CPU slows down those Windows VMs. Remember that large OS needs to be decompressed from lz4 by OpenZFS. My CPU is the 2nd slowest Ryzen ever (Ryzen 3 2200G; 4C4T; 3.7GHz OC). It is time for a mid-life upgrade of the CPU :)
My 2TB replaced 2 HDDs (500GB + 1TB). The 1TB HDD failed, but it had 10 power-on years in SMART, so no reasons to complain. The 500G HDD had a few month less, so also high time to remove it from the desktop. That 500GB HDD is now powered on for half an hour/week as part of my 2nd backup, I hope I can use it for a few years more in this way :)
The legend has truly returned!
Hi, any chance we'll get a new PC build video in the near future?
Not sure at the moment. There will be more computer builds but not sure when just yet.
@@EasyPcRepairs Thank you for the response! I forgot to mention this was a great video as always:)
Thank you!
Real content sir 👏🏻
Thank you!
Love the content as always :)
Thank you!
I always use at least one HDD with SSDs as they tend to die out earlier so it's always nice to have a backup.
Sounds like a good plan.
Great video!
Thank you!
The speed comparison seems to be focused on sequential read/write. What already 10+ years ago made having an SSD as a BOOT drive such an appealing but expensive upgrade, was/is the difference when randomly read and writing smaller files!
Yes, SSDs are much faster when it comes to reading and writing small files and Windows will often need small files to be written or read. So having an SSD with Windows installed will definitely speed up a computer, making the computer's response many times faster.
There are absolutely situations where using an HDD makes sense but with so many games these days listing "SSD" in their recommended (or even minumum) specs, is there any reason not to go SSD all the way on a modern gaming PC?
Hard drives are still the best long term data storage choice. Best used as an external drive and stored in a secure place between backups. Use SSD's in the computer but back up to an external physical hard drive.
I mean who still uses HDDs for boot drives anymore
If you have a very old computer i recommend replacing the old HDD with a SSD since it will extend the lifespan of that old computer
If we improve it so it store data and becomw battery using data as magnetic poles...hardrive better if it is higher magnetic stregnght read and write can power ita own computee with power if the read head had extrad head generate power for cpu
Greetings Dave, what makes the 4TB, 2.5” HDD better than 3.5” HDD? why is it more expensive?
Hi, yes it may seem a little strange that the 4TB 2.5" HDD is more expensive than the 4TB 3.5" HDD. The 2.5" HDD is actually slower than the 3.5" HDD, so it would seem reasonable for the 2.5" HDD to be cheaper, but instead it is more expensive. I believe the only reason the 2.5" HDD is more expensive is to do with manufacturing.
@@EasyPcRepairs I agree. It has more complex architecture to compress all those terabytes inside a casing 1/8 of the original size.
I'll repeat my comments from a previous video on the subject- SSDs are great for the OS and games, but total overkill for bulk storage.
Yes, hard drives are good enough for many things in my opinion.
Backblaze publishes their statistics regularly and so far, the SSDs in their inventory are significantly more reliable than HDDs (ca. 50% lower annual failure rate). Search for "The SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats Mid-year Review". That's really promising in terms of longevity. Personally I never had an SSD die on me but multiple HDDs did. Only ever had ~30 HDDs and ~15 SSDs in use, so the sample size is irrelevant to draw general conclusions. SSDs all day in desktops and laptops, HDDs only for NAS.
The only thing that hdd are good for nowadays are external storage. And no, they are not cheaper in the longterm because they consume more power.
Another advantage for hard disks - longevity. SSDs wear out faster.
Actually HDDs only last for about 3-5 years before they start to fail
SSDs last much longer and don't wear out as fast as HDDs do
Don't forget SSHD best of both worlds if you don't trust chips in the long run or really wanna save cost on storing a big SSHD is really cheap these days and are faster than the old HDs 🙏
Are those still a thing? The largest one I could find is 4 TB (with only 8 GB flash) and the price is comparable to SSDs with the same capacity.
SSD's are faster but I still don't trust them. I don't need the speed and certainly don't want them going south without warning.
Yes, hard drives do often give a warning that they are on their way out before failing.
You can trust SSDs in 2023.