7 Benefits of SSD Hosting Over HDD Hosting

If you’ve been shopping around for web-hosting, you’ve probably seen one of these two acronyms on nearly every host you’ve looked at:

SSD and HDD

These three letter abbreviations represent two different types of storage disks on any web hosting company. For you, it’s important to understand which type of Hard disk your hosting company is offering you & which one is better among: SSD & HDD.

While both are a viable means of storing files, SSD hosting has some very significant advantages when compared with HDD hosting.

In this post, I’ll tell you what these acronyms actually mean and why you should always choose SSD hosting over HDD hosting whenever possible.

SSD vs HDD – What’s the Difference?

HDD stands for “hard disk drive”.

It represents the older style hard drive where an actual physical disk spins around inside and stores your data. That means that in order to access data, there’s always a slight delay while the physical disk spins.

They’ve been around forever, and up until a few years ago were used in pretty much every computer. But, with the invention of more affordable and larger capacity SSDs, that trend has started to shift.

SSD stands for “solid state drive”.

Unlike an HDD, there’s no physical disk spinning inside. The data is all stored on microchips.

Because there are no moving parts, an SSD can load data much faster than an HDD.

What are the advantages of  Solid State Drive (SSD Hosting)

When it comes to comparing SSD Vs. HDD hosting, it’s not much of a battle. Solid state drives offer significant benefits & advantages when compared with hard disk drives. The only real area where hard disk drives are superior is the price per GB of storage, but even that gap is decreasing every day.

In the below section I have highlighted all the benefits of SSD over HDD hosting:

1. Faster Hosting Speeds

Because solid state drives are just generally faster than hard-disk drives, the major benefit of SSD hosting is faster site speed. Because your drive can serve up data faster, your site will consequently load faster (as long as there aren’t any external bottlenecks like slow internet speeds).

Because page speed is a Google ranking factor and affects everything from user experience to conversion rates, this benefit can actually make your site significantly more successful.

2. Better Data Security

Because hard disk drives rely on physical spinning, they’re far more prone to mechanical failure than solid state drives. And if a drive fails, you’re at risk for data loss. Hosting providers try to mitigate this flaw with HDDs by using RAID backup system (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks), but the risk still remains to an extent.

And while an effective backup strategy can further mitigate your risk, it’s still much nicer to not have to worry about your primary drive. In addition to generally having longer lifespans, SSDs are also more resistant to physical damage like bumps or drops.

For anyone who cares about their data, website, selecting a hosting company that offers SSD is a smart choice.

3. Executes Requests Faster

Unlike hard disk drives, solid state drives can read and write data at the same time. This means they can execute web requests faster than hard disk drives which will lead to a better hosting performance, especially for request-heavy sites. Faster read/write times can also lessen your server’s CPU reliance, which frees up server resources.

4. Better For Database Intensive Uses Like eCommerce or Forums

If you’re running a database intensive site (which many WordPress & eCommerce sites are), you’ll experience some of the best performance improvements by choosing SSD hosting over HDD.

Because the hard drive is typically the limiting factor on a database or I/O intensive site, any improvements to hard drive speed will massively improve the website’s performance.

5. Lower Power Usage – More Friendly to the Environment

Solid state drives typically only use about 20% of the power needed for spinning hard disk drives. When scaled up over hundreds of servers, this is a huge savings in power.

So, if you care about the environment and lowering electricity consumption, you’ll definitely want to choose SSD hosting.

6. More Reliable Performance Because No Fragmentation

Because solid state drives don’t experience data fragmentation like hard disk drives, they’re able to offer more reliable performance. SSDs always know exactly where the needed data is, unlike HDDs.

7. SSDs Are Decreasing in Cost

This one isn’t entirely a benefits, because solid state drives do still cost more than hard disk drives for the same storage capacity. But that gap is lessening every day. It’s now possible to get budget shared hosting plans using SSD for pretty much the same price as HDD hosting.