$\"Hard$ <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always a strange moment saying goodbye to a technology you\u2019ve used forever, and I now find myself waving farewell to another one: the humble spinning-platter hard drive.<\/p>\n

Sure, I\u2019ve been using SSDs for close to 15 years for my operating system and gaming drives, and SSDs are obviously<\/em> superior for performance and durability<\/a>. But for a very long time, cost and capacity have been against them and firmly in favor of traditional hard drives.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s time to call it\u2014I don\u2019t need a hard drive in my main PC anymore, and neither do you. Here\u2019s why you should make the switch.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Why I stayed stuck on my HDD<\/h2>\n
I first started building and working on PCs in the early \u201900s, and back then hard drives were a must-have component. They were the only way to store data in a consumer PC\u2014outside of crazy RAM drives<\/a>\u2014and I usually rocked a pair of them: a fast drive for the operating system and games, and another cheaper one for longer-term storage.<\/p>\n
Cut to a few years later when I started testing SSDs and the future was suddenly clear: HDDs for gaming were done<\/a>. While I still have some friends I\u2019ve yet to convince of this, the writing has been on the wall for a long, long, long time. SSDs outperform HDDs by a long shot.<\/p>\n
\n
$\"Western$
Replacing an internal drive with an SSD is one of the best upgrades you can make.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Western Digital<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
But even as lucky as I was\u2014I\u2019d been getting sent SSDs for testing\u2014I still never used an SSD as my large backup storage drive option. I still only trusted hard drives with my precious family photos and expansive collections of (legally) ripped movies and TV shows. Because even though SSDs were faster, HDDs were more reliable for years-long storage<\/a>.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s how it stayed for over a decade. I kept adding newer, faster SSDs to the point where I now have a hodge-podge collection of NVMe and SATA drives cluttering up my rig, with my Steam library stretched across 10+ TBs of super-fast SSD storage. All the while, in the background, I had my lone hard drive keeping charge of my important data. It too was replaced over time, but always remained an HDD.<\/p>\n
But in mid-2025, it\u2019s time to hang up its hat. With a new 4TB SSD, I\u2019ve ended the longest reign of any PC component type I\u2019ve ever used.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
The cost of a large-capacity SSD<\/h2>\n
SSDs are still more expensive than HDDs. Not as dramatically as they once were, but more expensive nonetheless. A 1TB hard drive will cost you around $35 while a 1TB NVMe SSD about $50. A 2TB HDD is around $65 while a 2TB NVMe SSD starts around $90.<\/p>\n
The 4TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD<\/a> that I replaced is about $85 new today while you can get something like the 4TB Crucial P3 Plus NVMe SSD<\/a> for $220 or the 4TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe SSD<\/a> for $250. So, yeah, on a GB-for-GB level, the hard drive is far more cost effective. And when you get up into the really<\/em> big capacities (think 20+ TBs), SSDs don\u2019t even have comparable alternatives at this time.<\/p>\n
\n
$\"Biwin$
The Biwin Black Opal NV7400 released in 2024 and packs a lot of performance in capacities up to 4TB. Who\u2019s ready for the future?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Jon Martindale \/ Foundry<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
But let\u2019s be real here. How much did you spend on your last graphics card upgrade? How much on your gaming PC as a whole? Is the speed difference between an SSD and HDD really worth $150 or so?<\/p>\n
Because believe me, while you don\u2019t need cutting-edge<\/em> performance to store your family photos and video collections, you\u2019ll definitely notice the day-to-day benefit of a (much) faster drive<\/a>. SSDs aren\u2019t just good at launching games quickly, but also at reading files without lag\u2014no matter what file it is or how many you\u2019re trying to read at once.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Don\u2019t sniff at the performance difference<\/h2>\n
When you\u2019re using a computer all day every day, every second matters. It all adds up, especially when it takes forever to launch apps, load files, and transfer data from drive to drive. Who has time to waste?<\/p>\n
I have tens of thousands of photos from over the years, and my Plex media library chugs I scroll through photos from years ago. It only takes a few seconds here and there, but when it happens every time<\/em> I load a new page or every time<\/em> a video buffers, it\u2019s a real pain.<\/p>\n
\n
$\"Plex$
Here\u2019s what my Plex media library looks like with an HDD\u2014it takes a while for the thumbnails to load. Not the case with an SSD.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Jon Martindale \/ Foundry<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
After switching over to an SSD, those waits are largely non-existent. It may hitch now and again on spectacularly large files, but the overall experience is smoother and feels more responsive. With an SSD, my library is working at my<\/em> speed, not the other way around.<\/p>\n
The same goes for adding new files to the drive, too. Where once backing up my phone with a few thousand images took many minutes, now it\u2019s more like a few seconds. That\u2019s true for backing up in general, too. Where previously I was stuck to the glacial write speed of my hard drive, now I can move entire catalogs of old work documents and other important data over to a new drive near instantaneously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
HDDs still last longer\u2026 probably<\/h2>\n
Outside of the ever-shrinking cost disparity between hard drives and SSDs, there is one area where hard drives still hold an advantage.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m talking longevity. Hard drives have been clearly shown to operate for years, or even decades, without data degradation. Backblaze\u2019s annual drive stats<\/a> paint a strong picture of most HDD models, that they can operate at high capacity for long periods of time without failing.<\/p>\n
SSDs don\u2019t have the same pedigree, but they can still last a long time before needing to be replaced<\/a>. The latest models have Terabytes Written (TBW) ratings in the hundreds or even thousands of terabytes, so they can be written to over and over again without fear of diminished drive performance or instability when reading\/writing data. In reality, most of us aren\u2019t going to use up that many write cycles.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not like HDDs are immune from wear and tear. While conventional wisdom suggests that a hard drive can run for 5 to 10 years with light-to-moderate use, hard drive manufacturers typically only offer warranties of 2 to 3 years. Professional hard drives get about five years\u2014and SSDs get about the same. For most consumers, 3 to 5 years is plenty.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one large caveat here, though.<\/strong> When it comes to archiving<\/em> data, or storing data in a drive that\u2019s powered off for a long time, then hard drives absolutely take the cake. Since SSDs store data electronically rather than magnetically, the data itself can degrade if the SSD isn\u2019t powered on for a long time<\/a>. Hard drives don\u2019t suffer that issue.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re saving data offline in a drawer somewhere, then use a hard drive. Otherwise, you\u2019ll benefit from using an SSD.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I\u2019m keeping my hard drive, by the way<\/h2>\n
Main operating system drives? Replace them with SSDs. Secondary storage drives that see day-to-day activity? Make \u2019em SSDs. Media streaming drives for things like Plex? That\u2019s right. SSDs! They just make the most sense in nearly all scenarios.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m tossing the HDD I replaced. It doesn\u2019t have to go in the bin just because it\u2019s ageing or slow. A hard drive is the better choice when you need extreme capacities or long-term offline storage, and the latter is what I\u2019m going to use it for.<\/p>\n
The HDD is handy for a 3-2-1 backup strategy<\/a>: 3 copies of your data on 2 different media, with 1 of those copies stored remotely off-site. The hard drive forms part of my long-term storage design.<\/p>\n
So you can live on a little longer, my old hard drive. You\u2019ll be buried even further away from relevance and I hope to never call on you\u2014but if I do, I know you\u2019ll be there to save my butt.<\/p>\n
Further reading:<\/strong> Why everyone should have a NAS drive<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/body><\/div>\n
\n
\n\t\t
\n\t\tAuthor: Jon Martindale<\/a>, Contributor, PCWorld\t\t<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Jon Martindale is a voracious writer and technology fanboy who loves nothing more than digging into the specs of the latest graphics cards, processors, and displays. He’s passionate about everything PC, but also enjoys experimenting with AIs, and covering new standing desks that can help avoid his worst posture habits.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read More<\/a>
\n Christeen Serna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s always a strange moment saying goodbye to a technology you\u2019ve used forever, and I now find myself waving farewell to another one: the humble spinning-platter hard drive. Sure, I\u2019ve been using SSDs for close to 15 years for my operating system and gaming drives, and SSDs are obviously superior for performance and durability. But<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":854566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[848,24266,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-854565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finally","8":"category-replaced","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

The cost of a large-capacity SSD<\/h2>\nSSDs are still more expensive than HDDs. Not as dramatically as they once were, but more expensive nonetheless. A 1TB hard drive will cost you around $35 while a 1TB NVMe SSD about $50. A 2TB HDD is around $65 while a 2TB NVMe SSD starts around $90.<\/p>\n

HDDs still last longer\u2026 probably<\/h2>\nOutside of the ever-shrinking cost disparity between hard drives and SSDs, there is one area where hard drives still hold an advantage.<\/p>\n