For businesses and individuals looking at fast and reliable hosting options, examining the many factors will help you make the correct decision. When looking at what these factors are, storage is obviously a huge one. So when it comes to storage, you’ve got two options; HDD or SSD hosting.

HDD is the most common type of storage for web hosting, and it has been for decades. It is reliable, cheap, and somewhat fast. But recently, a new player has entered the battle – solid state drives. In this article, we will look at the main differences between- both. So don’t go anywhere'.

Difference In Speed

Most personal computers that install the operating system onto an SSD are much faster than those with HDDs. But the difference in speed doesn’t only matter when installing the operating system. Literally, anything you install on an SSD will run faster. And that’s precisely what you’re getting with an SSD-based web hosting server.

On average, an SSD is up to 15 times faster than an HDD.  Although many of you think that solid state drives are much more expensive, that isn’t really the case. In recent times, solid state drives have gotten a lot cheaper. So that means solid state drive hosting solutions are becoming much more affordable.

Difference In Security and Reliability

Everyone wants a secure and reliable web hosting solution. This is especially important for big businesses. Data security is an important factor that cannot be overlooked. Without proper data security, no one can tell the potential damage hackers can do to your business. So where' do both hardware rank when it comes to securing data?

While many believe that hackers are the only way businesses can lose their data, that isn’t true. Reliability directly tells us about the chances of the driver failing due to mechanical problems. So the more reliable the drive, the more secure your data. HDDs are also losing this battle.

HDDs have tons of moving parts that make them much less reliable when it comes to corruption and data loss. However, that doesn’t make HDD hosting obsolete. This is because hosting providers offer clients backups of their websites. This mitigates any mechanical failures and secures data. But is that the gold standard in 2021?

The answer is a big no. This is where' solid state drives come into play. With SSDs, there are no moving parts. This makes the drive much more reliable and much safer. To caveat that, SSDs have a shorter lifespan than HDDs as we can write a lot less information on them. While this was a huge issue five to ten years ago, nowadays, solid state drives are built to last.

Difference In Cost

We come to the part of the article that ultimately explains why running a solid state drive for your web hosting solution justifies the price. Solid state drive storage is indeed more expensive. But that is all about to change with technology. Nowadays, SSDs are more and more accepted and utilized.

This drastically lowers the cost of running SSD storage on web hosting servers, making it much more affordable for individuals and businesses.

Difference In Efficiency

A huge reason why many are switching from HDD storage to SSD is efficiency. Solid state drives are nearly five times more efficient than hard disk drives. And that will have a big impact on your web hosting performance. Efficiency is calculated based on a couple of factors. The first and most important is reliability.

We know that solid state drives are more reliable than hard disk drives, as there is less risk of mechanical failures and breaking down. The second factor is the consumption of power. On average, solid state drives consume less than 2W, while hard disk drives consume up to 7W of power. This makes HDDs more expensive to maintain.

And the third factor is read/write time. We know that solid state drives are up to 15 times faster than hard disk drives. This is measured in read/write time. So all in all, the difference in efficiency is a huge reason why many are ditching HDD storage web hosting solutions for SSD ones.

Difference In Uptime

Uptime is an important metric that every person who owns a website must know about it. Namely, uptime is the time that your website is online. The greater the uptime, the more visitors will spend time on it. If your website suddenly goes down due to a sudden increase in traffic, then you’ll need to be looking for a better web hosting solution. So how does both HDD and SSD rank when it comes to uptime?

Both models aren’t prone to shutting down due to an increase in traffic. The difference is that SSD web hosting solutions can cope much easier with high traffic since it optimizes features to cope with the increase of traffic. HDDs, on the other hand, cannot support high traffic if there is no infrastructure for them.

If your website can support 1000 visitors at one particular time, it will shut down if it suddenly increases to 1500 visitors. This, as you can imagine, can have significant consequences for your business. Not only will visitors leave your website, but they’ll go to your competitors instead. This is even more important if your website serves as the main hub for your business. An example of one such website is an eCommerce website.

Conclusion

As technology improves solid state drives, it will only make them more affordable for the average consumer. This will directly impact prices for web hosting solutions that implement the solid state model. All in all, the difference between- both models is huge, even now. So it only makes sense to pay a little extra bit to get a more reliable solution in terms of web hosting storage.