If I were to be cavalier about the question posed and answered by this article, I’d simply tell you that Solid-State Drives (SSDs) are very fast, and Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) are not; though the latter are<\/em> far cheaper and far more capacious. When you need speed, use SSDs; when you are short of funds or need lots of capacity, use HDDs. But brevity doesn’t pay the rent, so… here’s the full SSD vs. HDD story.<\/p>\n

Hard Disk Drive (HDD)<\/h2>\n

Hard disk drives are perfectly named in that they store data on, yes, you guessed it–hard disks; more commonly referred to in the industry as platters. Said platters are coated with tiny magnetic particles whose orientation is changed to represent the 1’s and 0’s (on\/off) of binary data.<\/p>\n

The platters are mounted on a spindle inside a case and spun by an electric motor. As the tiny electronic particles whirl around in their little fixed orbit, they are hunted by read\/write heads floating (suspended by surface effect) just above the platters. Particles are manipulated in bands, and the heads step from band to band with the use of… stepper motors. Magnetic fields issuing from the heads either report the state of the particles (read) or reorient them (write).<\/p>\n