The laptop market is moving from traditional “spinning rust” hard disk drives (HDDs) to chip-based, solid-state drives (SSDs) for several reasons. SSDs are more responsive; they consume less battery power; they are less likely to break when dropped and they take up a lot less space.

Advantage of SSDs

The main advantage is responsiveness. SSDs make actions such as loading and saving programs and files much snappier. In laptops, the hard drive is not kept spinning all the time, so as to save power and provide longer battery life. When a program needs data from the hard drive, it has to wait until the hard drive spins up, which causes a slight delay. When a program fetches data from an SSD, it doesn’t have to wait: it’s almost instantly available.

Disadvantage of SSDs

The drawback is, and always has been, the price. SSD storage costs much more than HDD storage and the ratio used to be much higher. That’s why the changeover has already taken more than two decades. However, every time Flash memory prices fall, SSDs become cheaper and more people are willing to pay the price difference. If you can afford an SSD, it’s the way to go.

What's the use?

Of course, SSDs mean that most people have to make do with much less storage space. A laptop might come with a 128GB or 256GB SSD instead of a 1TB or 2TB hard drive. A 1TB hard drive stores eight times as much as a 128GB SSD, and four times as much as a 256GB SSD. The bigger question is how much you really need.

In fact, other developments have helped to compensate for the lower capacities of SSDs.

For example, many people now store more data in the cloud – using online services such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox – instead of on their laptops. The advantage is that you can access your online files from other devices including desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Some people have home media servers or NAS (network-attached storage) file servers. If you have thousands of music files, thousands of photos, and hundreds of movies, they're probably not going to fit on a laptop. The solution is to put them on a NAS, which will stream them to your TV, PC and other devices.

Chips with everything

There are at least four types of laptop storage, not just two. Many cheap machines don't have either an HDD or SSD, they use eMMC chips instead. These are a variant of the MMC (Multi-Media Card) and SD (Secure Digital) storage cards that became common in digital cameras and smartphones. The ones in laptops and tablets usually offer 32GB or 64GB of storage, though 32GB can lead to problems updating Windows 10.

Obviously, eMMC “drives” are not as fast as SSDs, but they work well enough for their intended purposes. Consumer-level SSDs started out as replacements for traditional hard drives. They usually came in cases that would fit the same drive bays, which made it easier to replace an HDD with an SSD. This is still possible with some current laptops and many older ones.

However, the arrival of high-capacity Flash chips meant they could be plugged into the motherboard, which avoided the need for bulky HDD-sized cases. This enabled PC suppliers to make thinner, lighter laptops.

About us

Shenzhen KingSpec Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2007. KingSpec factory has the abilities of hardware design and development, manufacture and wholesale. KingSpec has been entitled as “National High-tech Enterprise” by Chinese Governments yearly.

Since 2008, KingSpec has been dedicating time and investments into SSD technology development and upgrade production process. So far, KingSpec company has cooperated with TCL, Great Wall, Emerson, EVOC, AAEON, NEC, SONY, ASUS, Lenovo and other enterprises or institutions.

Product quality has always been Kingspec's frist priority. Every product line Every product line obtained certifications including CE, FCC, RoHS, REACH, KC. The company joined the ASSD (SSD ASSOCIATION) to grasp the cutting-edge technologies, standards, and industry trends in order to provide and reliable products to clients. If you are looking for a reliable merchandise of SSDs, please contact us now!