Choosing a hosting plan for your business website can be a difficult one. You must consider several factors, including speed, performance, reliability, pricing, security, and more. And the critical hosting feature that can affect them is your storage drive.
Typically, you have two options – Solid State Drive (SSD) and Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Both have pros and cons in terms of the performance of your website. That’s why it’s important to understand the functionality of both and conduct a thorough comparison before purchasing a hosting solution.
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To make it easier for you, we’ll go over both SSD and HDD in detail and their key differences.
What is HDD Hosting?
HDD or hard disk drive is a traditional hard drive hosting method. It’s commonly used in web hosting because it’s cost-effective. HDD is a type of magnetic storage device and is one of the most common storage solutions available.
Magnetic storage devices are popular for storing large amounts of data at a relatively low cost. Other types of magnetic storage devices include floppy disks and magneto-optical drives.
What is SSD Web Hosting?
SSD or solid-state drive is a type of drive with no moving parts. Although SSDs are more expensive than traditional HDD drives, they’re much more efficient on several parameters.
The absence of moving parts makes SSDs more reliable and better, performance-wise. Further, they give you the benefit of lower latency which means that SSDs can find and serve files to web visitors more quickly.
SSD vs HDD Hosting: Key Differences
| SSD hosting | HDD hosting | |
| Speed | Since SSD is the latest technology, speed is its most significant advantage. It offers great agility in accessing data on websites, making it an excellent choice for web pages that perform many requests to the server and database. | An HDD drive is relatively slow because it relies on old technology with physically rotating metal discs. Each HDD typically includes a driving head that travels around the disc in search of the data you require. After that, the information is transferred to the computer. |
| Data Security and Reliability | Since the SSD is resistant due to the absence of small mechanical parts, data loss is unlikely. The chances of failure in SSD hosting are also lower. SSD drives are more resilient and less prone to physical damage. Since they don’t have moving parts, the chances of wearing out are also less, keeping your website files safe from data loss compared to traditional hard drives. | HDDs contain moving parts, which enhances the risk of failure and data loss. Most web hosting providers reduce such risks by leveraging backup systems. However, the risk of data loss still exists, especially for heavy-traffic websites. |
| Power | SSD has better and more efficient storage that consumes much less power. Hence, an increasing number of hosting providers are choosing this type of storage solution for their business needs. | HDD uses multiple times the power of an SSD while idle and almost 2.5 to 8 times more power under a heavy server load. |
| Efficiency | SSD drives are much more efficient as they’re equipped to read and write data at up to 550 MB/second. | Typical HDDs read and write data at up to 160 MB/second. That’s because it requires mechanical movements for both reading and writing data from the disc consuming more power and time. |
| Storage capacity | SSDs offer a storage capacity of 50 to 100 terabytes. Since large businesses need more hosting storage as they expand, SSD serves as an ideal choice for them. | HDDs come with an average capacity of 1 to 18 terabytes. |
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SAS vs SATA: Which is the Best Interface for Your Storage Drive
Besides choosing the storage drive for your hosting, it also pays to use the best interface. You have two options which are Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA). They function by transferring data to and from hard drives.
Read more to learn the differences between the two interfaces and which one to choose for your web needs.
SAS
SAS works by connecting directly to the disk drive in a point-to-point interface. It works faster than SATA when it comes to reading and writing data.
The benefit of this is that if there’s any issue or failure, there is still high redundancy, leading to seamless performance.
Some of the other benefits of SAS include:
- High performance, leading to greater bandwidth
- High scalability
- Best for servers and workstations
- Storage capacity is lower than SATA, but servers can use multiple hard drives
- More expensive than SATA because it uses complex hardware
SATA
SATA works by connecting to mass storage devices such as optical drives or hard disks. Some of the benefits of SATA on servers are as follows:
- Lower costs as compared to SAS
- Storage capacity of 3 terabytes which is higher than SAS
Speed Up Your Hosting with SSD
Most web hosting packages today offer businesses a choice between HDD and SSD drives. However, SSDs are quickly superseding HDDs primarily because of speed, performance, and more reliable technology.
Going with an SSD hosting solution can give your business various advantages such as boosting your website traffic, higher search rankings, increasing sales, and better user engagement.
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