The PC's Wheel Was Reinvented A While Ago: Solid State Hard Drives Vs SATA III HDD

 Solid State Hard Drives vs SATA HDD Hard Drives 

Non technical people may want to refer to the Bloglossery to brushen up on nerms (nerd terms) before reading the blog post.

Bloglossery:

   

Solid State Hard Drive  or SSD- A hard drive with flash memory opposed to moving discs.  Technically it isn't a hard drive at all but that's what people call it.  Also known as a SSD or Solid State Drive.

SATA - This stands for Serial ATA.  I know, right?  ATA stands for Advance Technology Attachment if you must know the rest of the acronym.  Technically, SATA is the transfer architecture from the hard drive to the mother board.  Often, however, people refer to a standard hard drive with spinning discs as SATA hard drives or SATA HDD. Types of SATA include I, II, or III and eventually IV and so on.

IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics.  An older than SATA (now obsolete) data transfer technology that used those ugly grey ribbon cables and got all covered with nasty dust bunnies.  Very slow in comparison to SATA I, II, or III.

HDD - Hard Disc Drive.  The drive has a hard disc that spins, no nerdy embellishments necessary.

Gbps - Gigabits per second.  How fast information gets transfered, in this case we are talking about from the HDD or SSD to the motherboard.  Basically, 3 Gbps is slow, 6Gbps is fast.

 

 Death of a Hard Drive

"My computer won't boot.  Help!" - any computer user

"Is it making a louder than normal clicking noise?" - SPCS Tech

"...Yes" - (spoken in an anxious voice)

"I hate to tell you some bad news, but your hard drive crashed."

(silence, then a long drawn out sigh.)

Sadly, these types of computer woes are just part of a typical service day for older PCs at Sensible PC Solutions.  Hard drives (regardless of brand) crash seemingly all the time.  They don't even have to be that old for this to happen.  Worst of all, it always happens at the worst possible time to unsuspecting and unprepared computer users, regardless of how they use their computers.

"Is my data gone or can you save my stuff?" (spoken with a glimmer of hope in their voice) 

"Sure, but how easily, depends on this question...  Have you done a backup recently?"

This is where the conversation can go from already stressful to even more stressful for the user who just lost his or her hard drive.  

(Good) Scenario A: "Yes, I have a back up I made just yesterday"

'Official' SPCS Answer: "Piece of cake, we'll have your system back up and running and all your data recovered in no time"

(Both the SPCS tech and the user sigh in relief.)

(Bad) Scenario B: "Backup?  What do you mean?  Like save my stuff somewhere else?"

'Official' SPCS Answer: "Well, in the case you don't have a current backup we can answer usually, yes.  We can recover some or all of your data depending on how badly the drive crashed.  We use specialized software designed to recover data from damaged hard drives.  But how much they recover depends on how badly the disc is physically damaged.  In the worst case, as a last resort, we can also outsource to a highly specialized data recovery service for mission-critical data recovery, in which case the hard discs from the HDD are actually extracted and then rebuilt in a clean room environment.  Bottom line, what is recoverable all depends on how badly the hard drive died."

"What do you mean?"  the now even more stressed user asks.

"Sometimes they die instantly, which makes data recovery more difficult, and sometimes they die slowly... Either way there is a chance your data is recoverable." 

"How did this happen to me?" (the user asks with an annoyed tone in their voice)

"How do hard drives die?"

At this point, I would like to answer the question quite honestly, but after you read the honest answer you might understand why I don't answer this way.

"They die because of their architecture.  Hard drives die because of their antiquated inherent design flaws."

 Obviously, I don't answer that way, because sometimes the short blunt answer is not always the most helpful, so often I answer with a less disenfranchised truth.

"A hard drive can die almost as many ways as a person can die.  For example, electrocution (surges), old age, you could bump the computer or laptop too hard (abrupt movement shock), perhaps it's connected to an old inadequate surge protector, or maybe there were dips in the power grid, a defective part inside the hard drive, etc."

In reality, besides a fan, the hard drive is the only moving part inside of a computer, so naturally it is the most susceptible to failure.

And boy is it moving fast!

 

  ^Watch short clip of all the hard drive's moving parts in action (approx 32 seconds)

What you see on that video clip is only one of the stacked discs and one of the read\write heads.  There are numerous levels below it also moving blindingly fast.  With all those moving parts, it starts to become obvious that it is only a matter of when one of those parts will fail.   Therefore it is very important you run regular backups, especially when you are using SATA HDD hard drives.  Cover all your bases!

Think about it like this...

Imagine a car with an engine that can't be oiled.  That is what a SATA HDD or older IDE hard drive is, a spinning wheel with many potential points of failure and no 5W-30.

Now, imagine a car with no wheels at all that makes no sound and moves 10X faster!  THAT is what a Solid State hard drive is.

A solid state hard drive is a lot like a large internal thumb drive without the waiting for USB.

In other words, if you have a Solid State hard drive in your computer, you have a computer with no moving parts, consequently they are SOLID, and infinitely more stable.  Yes, they were made by humans, so technically they can still get zapped out, but compared to the spinning wheel that is extremely unlikely.

So what are you waiting for?  

Why haven't you switched to a Solid State Drive?

Typical Justifications:

Justification A: The storage size is substantially smaller then an average SATA III HDD drive.

Yeah but: You don't need very much space to put Windows OS on what's basically a bulletproof hard drive.  And you can have a larger SATA III drive for storage, and back that up to protect your stuff for a speedy computer with good redundancy.

Justification B: They are very expensive compared to a SATA III HDD drive.

Yeah but: Kinda, sorta.  The prices of Solid State drives and memory in general are coming way down while we are still suffering from a SATA HDD shortage that keeps their prices higher than they were last year.  For example, I just purchased a 60 GB Solid State drive for about 80 dollars that is more than enough for Windows 7 Professional to run with room to spare for software.  I may be embarrassed to mention that price later, since seemingly every day the price of Solid State drives drop further.

Justification C: I just got a fast motherboard that supports 6Gbps hard drives and I already got a 2TB SATA III HDD hard drive that supports 6Gbps data transfer rate, so it's already maxed out.

Yeah but: Wrong, that is a misnomer.  Just because the hard drive supports 6Gbps doesn't mean the wheels can spin anywhere near fast enough to reach that speed of output.

Motherboard Freeway

Think about your motherboard as a highway with a 65mph speed limit.  Now, think about your SATA HDD hard drive as a bicyclist, who on her best day with the wind at her back can only reach 30 mph.  Your SATA hard drive is a bicyclist on a freeway, and all the Solid State hard drives are flying DeLoreans honking at the HDD biker to hurry up because it's bottle-necking the whole freeway. 

Summary:

Sure, traditional hard drives will live on for a while as Solid State plays the inevitable 'new-technology catch-up' game.  But their days are undoubtedly numbered, especially as Solid State drives become cheaper, larger and faster.  The entire concept of putting a spinning wheel in a computer is obsolete.  Get rid of the bicycle on your freeway and watch your computer fly.  Get rid of the "When will this thing die" question mark above your head. 

While you are at it:

Sell any stock you own in companies that make hard drive parts!  Look, I want to support local businesses, especially industries in my area that employ a lot of hard working Wisconsinites, and especially since there are not a lot left in my home town.  However, unless companies (Like local company Hutchinson Technologies, ahem!)  branch out of the moving hard drive parts business, they will dwindle and become the sole survivors of a shrinking niche market, and eventually they will die like the parts they build are designed to do.

Introduction... No Twitter, No Facebook, Just A Sensible Blog

Why do some people assume that because I'm a computer guy I should be Facebook and Twitter junkie?  A lot of my friends and family downright insist that as a Computer Repair Service I absolutely MUST have an active Facebook and Twitter account for "staying in touch" with my clientele.  I think Facebook and Twitter might be beneficial to Sensible PC Solutions advertising-wise, but in all honesty, I doubt it would do anything for the few followers who "befriended" SPCS.  I started a Facebook and Twitter account initially as I was instructed to, but my heart just wasn't in it.  It felt very awkward, forced, and frankly fake every time I mentioned anything on either social network.  I would post something about a virus, (boring!) or a sale, (spam!) and I'd immediately question if this was at all helpful to anyone reading my post.  Knowing it wasn't, I left the accounts in limbo, saying nothing, watching my followers and "friends" build up into a long list of people I didn't know and a ton of spammers.  This wasn't helping anyone, much less my business so I closed the accounts frankly feeling somewhat liberated.

I get it now.  I understand that Facebook and Twitter is only helpful if you believe in what you are saying on them is helpful and you aren't just "going through the motions".  Not to mention, the notion of being "friends" with a company like "Land O' Lakes" or Sensible PC Solutions was a fairly ridiculous concept for true users of Facebook and Twitter.  In a perfect world I would love to be friends with all my clients and potential clients, but here in reality, I'm a service provider.  If I was being a sincere user of these social networks, any SPCS tweets or Facebook comments would be seen as basically spam by any of my readers.  No matter which way I spun the scenario, it all came back to "Do I want to be a spammer on someones page?"  The answer is, no.  I hate spammers and I refuse to become something I despise.

Don't mistake my opinion on this as a slam against Facebook or Twitter, they have great significance for those who know how to use them, for those who say what they mean and mean what they say.  

Yet in my line of work, there is a lot of technology to stay informed about, and I am very passionate about this stuff.  I feel I do have a voice that needs to be heard by my business associates, so SPCS does need an outlet.  I've come to the conclusion that for me to keep it real, I must be a passionate and sincere contributor.  I love to share my discoveries, but I simply must have a better way to get this message across to my friends, family, and clients in an non-intrusive way.  In a way that is less frequent, and therefore less trivial then the big two social networks.  Instead of pestering readers on their homepages with random tidbits of uselessness, I decided to place quality over quantity, relevance and real nerd-related entertainment over marketing fluff.

Long story short, this is why the Sensible PC Solutions Blog was born.  I promise to blog about only things that are relevant to technology, things that are interesting, entertaining and informative.  (I mean, come on!  What's more entertaining than talking about Star Trek?)


This blog is the perfect application for that because even if I only write a blog once a month, I know my readers will take away valuable (or at least entertaining) information from the posts.  I hope eventually to build up a nice knowledge base of tech-talk and Trek-talk here, and I hope that all my readers understand my business and passion better from these short blog entries.  

So If you are a computer geek, if you like discussing and reading about new technology, or if you love Star Trek, it's my job to make sure you will want to subscribe to Sensible PC Solutions Blog.

It goes without saying that readers of the blog should feel free to comment on any of my posts and help me grow as both a tech writer and a business owner from constructive feedback.  Thanks in advance for your support.