Let's Take A Drive
 | Author:
Victor Sample
Vic Sample: MT43 News Treasurer |
Every weekday morning I read a Computer/Technology newsletter that covers a wide variety of topics. Recently there was a worrisome article about Microsoft considering a requirement for Windows to boot up from a Solid State Drive.
Why is that a problem and why would you care?
Since the early 1980s PCs have come equipped with HDDs (Hard Disk Drive). Earlier PCs used flexible, external storage units called “floppy disk drives”. HDDs were generally not externally accessible but offered a larger amount of storage.
Most of your PC (the CPU, memory, etc.) are electronic parts. They can fail but usually have a long life. HDDs are mechanical devices. Similar to old phonographs with an arm that played the record, they have spinning disc-like surfaces with a head that moves across those devices. Because they have moving parts, HDDs fail more often than the electronic parts of your computer.
SSDs (Solid State Drives) are electronic and generally have a longer life span than HDDs. Because they have no moving parts they are much faster than HDDs. Many new computers are built using SSDs rather than HDDs.
Again, why would you care if Microsoft required an SSD to boot up the computer? They are faster and last longer. That sounds good.
There are several problems:
Most of you have computers that only have HDDs. If Microsoft starts requiring an SSD to start up Windows you won’t be able to use that version of Windows without replacing the HDD with an SSD or buying a new computer that has an SSD instead of an HDD.
SSD drives are more expensive than HDD drives. The cost of buying a new computer then goes up and/or the amount of storage you have drops. You could install an HDD to go along with the SSD or get an external drive to give you more storage. However, the external drives are slower and more expensive.
Most computers have at least 500 gigabytes of storage. Many PCs come with 1 terabyte of storage (1000 gigabytes). PCs that have SSD instead of HDD usually only have 256 gigabytes. Some have 512 gigabytes, but they are correspondingly more expensive. As a frame of reference, photos taken with modern smartphones are usually around 5 megabytes in size. The early HDD drives would only hold two pictures taken with today’s smartphones! The 1 terabyte disk drives available now (for about $100.00) are 100 thousand times bigger than those early drives.
Let’s hope Microsoft does not decide to require SSD drives!
