It depends. Low grade SSDs do not last as long as HDs or high grade SSDs. They can be crap. High grade SSDs are about four times as expensive as low grade SSDs. I like a good quality SSD for the OS and everything else to a hybrid drive or standard HD. Boot time is excellent. Backup is entire disk imagine so it is easy to restore (been through it, use an 8GB backup drive.)
Not sure how you’d configure the laptops but this has worked great for me. Just be aware of the difference in grade of SSD if you go that route.
Boot up speed and access speed during operation - both of these are striking improvements. Then there is the weight factor - SSD machines are lighter.
As for the lifespan, many other things can and will break or wear out earlier.
You want Samsung SSDs and no others. Samsung SSDs have the longest life. Choose their higher end series and they last even longer.
SSD, it’s the only way to be sure, I have had too many HD’s crash in the past.
Hard Disc drives are mechanical devices with moving parts, bearing and a motor and any of these can and will fail. The most life I have gotten is around three years.
The Solid State drives are basically the same as the main memory in your computer and I have had these going on 6 years with no problems.
Samsung SSD’s are the best IMO while the Western Digital SSD
is made by SanDisk and are a little less in cost but also good.
I have 6 portable and external hard drives ranging from 250 GB to 8 tb, all SSD’s. Not one of them failed. The ones that failed within 5 years were in the laptops. The earliest one I have which works I bought in 2006 Maxtor, and damn thing still works. But it sure is heavy plus needs lots of wires to power and connect.
| Cost | Speed | Durability | Highest capacity | Energy efficiency | |
| HDD | Cheaper | Slower | Less durable | 10TB | Use more energy |
| SSD | More expensive | Faster | More durable | 4TB | Use less energy |
I was in IT support for 20 years - I vote the SSD route. Not prone to head crashes, easier to recover data if the OS corrupts, and quicker to reimage. Unless you’re trying to run multiple resource-intensive apps all at once and/or need huge gobs of storage, an SSD drive will fit the bill.
My MacBook Pro 2012 became a brand-new computer when I replaced its HD with an SSD. Saved me from buying a new machine.
so it depends on your corp replacement cycle. if your looking at a 2-5yr life, go for SSD. under no circumstances should you consider mechanical platter based hard drives. As your IT infrastructure is replaced in the 12-24 month cycle, newer architectures will be coming on line that blur the line between storage space and ram. (its the biggest performance bottle neck) You already see it in phones and tablets. So if you need to keep legacy systems going, go SSD. otherwise replace the entire system.
Hybrid drives come in two forms: ones with a large cache memory built in (kinda old school) or ones with both SSD and HDD built into one device. The device figures out when to move stuff to HDD based on how long it’s been since you last needed that information.
And don’t worry about rpm if you go with HDD or hybrid. Go with transfer rate. Just like it’s possible for a car to have low acceleration and top speed even if the engine can have a high rpm, a HDD drive’s transfer rate is not completely linked to it’s rpm.
We went to SSD about 4 years ago so our CAD/GIS programs would fire up faster as well as regenerate the drawing faster as.
Boots up my Windows 7 Pro with a million programs (exaggeration) in 19 seconds.
SSDs all the way.
It’s technically correct that you can only rewrite a given block of SSD storage a finite number of times. However, SSDs include their own memory management and extra memory cells. As cells “wear out” or fail, the SSD seamlessly rewrites the data to fresh unused cells.
Because the storage and retrieval system is so different from traditional drives, one thing you don’t want to do, indeed should not do, is run traditional “defrag” maintenance on an SSD. There is no need to optimize the retrieval of the data as there is no latency as there are no moving parts in an SSD.
By the way, life expectancy on an SSD is on the order of 50 years.
https://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-hardware/ssd-lifespan.html
SSD still the sweet spot, Nvme kinda overkill, but nice to have, especially as boot drive.
Don’t bother with anything else, unless your budget is very limited.
I got my first SSD laptop almost nine years ago. I ran it with no problem for six years with no problem. Then two and a half years ago I got another SSD drive just because laptops always get used up at some point.
I was running the newer one and spilled Coke in it last fall. Locked it up. Pulled out the older SSD while the new one was being repaired. It needed a new keyboard but it is nine now.
I bought another SSD last fall as a back-up also SSD. Have it set up but it is a Windows 10 and the two others are Win 7 SSD. I like SSD. They are quiet and fast and so far - it will be ten years in August - no SSD has burned out or crashed.
2. You will see SSDs with different sizes - such as 480Gb and 512Gb. While both have the same number of chips inside, the 480Gb version sets aside more memory space to cover for bad sectors. If you are concerned then this eliminates your concerns.
3. Buy and run Gibson's Spinrite 6, and level 2. It is truly amazing how much good it can do, even on an SSD. On a HDD it seems magical. Tip - buy four copies and you have bought a site license for the entire company. Then put it on each drive or make bootable flash drives for field employees.
Run Spinrite on new drives and about every year or so and your drives’ data may never die.
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
4. They are on the net 24/7? How often do you reboot these laptops? Without knowing more, I would say that you need to study the use model of your system design.
5. Paul Combretta!? Ha ha ha!!
SSDs are the way. Much faster, quiet, and cool.
My workstation used to take 10 minutes to boot with a spinner, now it takes about 45 seconds.