Same price, different drives
A school has money for 30 new PCs. A salesperson offers a big, cheap hard disk in each. Another offers a small, fast solid state drive for a higher price.
Which is right? It depends on what the PCs will do.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| HDD | hard disk drive: spinning disks and a moving arm that read and write data |
| SSD | solid state drive: a drive with no moving parts that stores data in chips |
| Capacity | how much data a drive can hold |
| Access time | how long a drive takes to find data |
| Network card | the part that connects a computer to a network |
| Network | computers joined together so they can share data |
| Overheat | to get too hot and risk damage |
| Configuration | the settings that decide how a part works |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can compare hard disk drives, solid state drives and network cards, and choose one for a job.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Hard disk drives (HDD)
An HDD has spinning disks and a moving arm. It has a big capacity for a low price. That is why it is used for large stores of files, such as backups.
But the moving parts can break if the drive is dropped or shaken. It also makes heat, so it has a greater chance to overheat.
Solid state drives (SSD)
An SSD has no moving parts. It stores data in chips. Access is faster. Writing and rewriting are faster too. A knock is less likely to harm it.
Because it is small, it fits in thin devices such as phones and tablets. But it costs more for each gigabyte, and the same money buys less capacity.
HDD and SSD compared
| HDD | SSD | |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity for the money | More | Less |
| Cost | Lower | Higher |
| Access and write speed | Slower | Faster |
| Damage from knocks | Higher risk: moving parts | Lower risk: no moving parts |
| Heat | More chance to overheat | Less heat |
| Fits in small devices | Rarely | Yes, such as phones and tablets |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
How full is the drive?
df -h / | tail -1A command for the lesson’s lab terminal. It is shown here and not run.
List the network connections
ip -brief linkA command for the lesson’s lab terminal. It is shown here and not run.