Computing technologies have been advancing at an accelerated rate, everyone has seen it and everyone who has a pair of eyes and ears knows about it. But there are some significant factors that are holding the development back. One of these is the use of mechanical HDDs. The problem with this is the mechanical part. While HDDs rely on moving parts, SSDs (Solid State Disk) rely solely on electronics with no moving parts, making it a lot more reliable and much faster. They function similarly to USB drives. SSD Disks use non-volatile memory for storing information. Unlike RAM, they won’t lose any of the said information once the power is switched off. They store data on microchips, so they have no moving parts which make them more resistant to shakes and have much fewer delays when they read/write data. In terms of functionality, they are no different from regular HDDs, but they offer significantly more speed. While HDD’s speed can be 15-20 milliseconds, SSDs have 0.2 milliseconds read/write speeds. This makes it obvious that SSDs will offer much better functionality. These benefits also apply to web hosting performance. Speed is a crucial part of modern data-driven websites. Users expect webpages to load in less than three seconds. It’s obvious that the medium that you store a website on, affects the speed at which it is delivered to users. SSD drives are about 3 times faster than HDDs, so you have an obvious reason to choose them, but they are about 4 times more costly. A 2TB SSD drive can cost about $4,000. A classic 500GB HDD costs about $80, while a budget 500GB SSD costs about $200. Looking at it more bluntly, with HDDs users will be reading your website off a spinning disk. It is a process that is based on physical movement which cannot compare to the speed of electronics. Although HDDs are still widely used in computers and servers, you should say no to using HDDs when you’re choosing a web host. SSD drives are about 3 times faster than HDDs, so you have an obvious reason to choose them, but they are about 4 times more costly. HDDs vs. SSDs The invention of SSDs holds a significant place among the latest technological innovations. They have departed from the traditional architecture that hard drives used to have for the last 10 years. The main difference between HDD and SSD drives is that HDDs are mechanical devices while SSDs are thoroughly electronic. HDD (Hard Disk Drive) A hard disk uses magnetic storage for storing and reading data. It has one or more rapidly rotating disks that are coated with magnetic material. The information from these disks is read with a magnetic head that is mounted on a moving actuator arm. The speed at which the disk inside rotates determines how fast the data can be read/written. HDDs at data centers and major enterprises usually have reading speeds of 7.2 thousand to 15 thousand rotations per minute. Their overall speed is measured with IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second). The measurements mentioned above mean about 80 to 180 IOPS. Hard disks have only got physically smaller over the past years. Some new models have been filled with helium. This way the magnetic heads have less environmental resistance like they would have with oxygen when they’re moving. Companies are simply tinkering with existing technology, but it is on the way out. The ability to read data from disk platters only puts serious limitations on it. Pros: An incredible amount of available disk space from 100GB to 4TB. Cheap. You can buy one from $50 to $500 Cons: Vulnerable to a lot of movement. Very low read/write speeds compared to an SSD. SSD (Solid State Drive) Unlike HDDs, which rely on disks, SSDs store data on microchips. It doesn’t use any moving parts so finding and reading the location of a piece of data has theoretically no delay. The same goes for writing as well. This makes them a lot faster and more reliable than any of their predecessors. SSD’s speed is measured differently from HDDs because they are manufactured for different purposes. They can be read-intensive or write-intensive, but their performance is also measured in IOPS. A read-intensive SSD operates with approximately 4600 to 15 500 IOPS. A write-intensive SSD operates with approximately 65 000 to 75 000 IOPS. Pros: High-speed performance when accessing random data 100x faster than a regular HDD. High-speed data transfer, 4x faster than an HDD. Cons: A lot more expensive. So, Is SSD Web Hosting Really That Fast? Websites made with content management systems, such as WordPress, Magento or Drupal come with thousands of themes and plugins that all have to load and do their thing when a user visits the website. Further, once a visitor enters such a dynamic website, he/she triggers many database queries while accessing the on the page content. With so many database queries and so much content to view, using rotating disks significantly slows the overall speed of the website. Speed being an important factor as it is, both from a user interface and an SEO standpoint. Having so much to load for your users is a demanding task that requires hardware that can do it as efficiently as possible. Solid-state drives do just that. They read all this data simultaneously so the browsing speed will be much better, thanks to shorter loading times. As mentioned earlier HDDs read/write data with a 15-20 millisecond access time, while SSDs do it with a 0.2 access time. Traditional Web Hosting plans still store your information with rotating disks, while more modern ones have their SSD drives ready for you right away. The Advantages of SSD Hosting Simply put, SSD hosting is much faster and much more reliable than those who use HDDs. SSD drives are more shock resistant, have a lot less latency and access time. Here are some of the greatest benefits of using SSD hosting. 4x Faster Hosting Speed If a web