SSD vs HDD – A Reseller’s Guide on How and Where to Sell

Laptops are rarely bought on an impulse. It is undoubtedly a high involvement purchase, made further complex by the wide array of device specifications and features to choose from, in the marketplace.

From picking a laptop brand with the best after-sales service and price to the RAM, graphics card and bundle offers; it’s a struggle to zero-in on the right device for the business.

Hence, the onus falls on you, as a reseller, to make the decision-making a little easier for the end-client.

Amongst the many queries flitting about on the customer’s minds, in this post, we will address ‘Which storage to choose – SSD (Solid State Drives) or HDD (Hard Disk Drives)?’

Read on, as we have listed the pros and cons of SSDs and HDDs which will help you understand how they stack up against each other –

Speed – 

SSDs have a clear advantage over HDDs in terms of speed (how fast the drive can read and write customer data). SSDs can not only read and write data faster, but it also enables the system to boot up faster. HDDs, on the other hand, use a spinning platter. The revolutions per minute of the platter are what determines the speed of the device. As the revolutions per minute increase, so does the performance of the drive.

Affordability – 

Owing to the superior speed that SSD-based systems deliver, they tend to be pricier. HDDs on the other hand, offer a cheaper means of storing large amounts of data. Fortunately, the advancements in SSD technology, in recent years, is leading to a drop in their prices. However, they are still more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives. On average, an SSD (for the same amount of storage) could cost almost twice that of an HDD.

Reliability – 

SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, and less susceptible to wear and tear. Due to their mechanical parts, HDDs need to be more delicately managed. Also, they are vulnerable to physical damage. For instance, if a laptop with an HDD were to fall, it would be damaged due to the collision of its moving parts. SSDs, however, have no moving parts. Hence, the drive is expected to maintain data integrity for over 200 years.

Power – 

SSDs use less power than HDDs. So, your customer would be able to enjoy a longer battery life when employing an SSD. Additionally, in critical environments such as data centres, the power efficiency of SSDs means that less heat is generated. This, in turn, reduces the organization’s spends on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC).

Maintenance – 

Data within HDDs get stored in scattered fragments. And searching for data within each of these fragments takes time, which slows down the device. Hence defragmentation of HDDs is performed to consolidate content(fragments) and boost the laptop’s performance. This is the kind of regular and time-consuming maintenance that HDDs require. On the other hand, content on SSDs does not fragment and thus require less investment into its upkeep.

So, an SSD-based laptop is a right choice to recommend if:

• Your customer is an enterprise organization that is not cost-sensitive and places a higher value on computing performance variables such as speed, reliability and endurance of its storage drives

And an HDD-based laptop is the correct choice to recommend if –

• Your customer is a startup, SME or a growing organization that needs to store large amounts of data, without too high an investment

Ultimately, the question is, does your client need storage to be cheap and plentiful, or fast and safe?

By identifying the solution that best fits the end-customer, you can improve the sale of SSDs/HDDs.

Talk to us at Hiperdist today for a detailed consultation and find out more about what your customers need.