Benefits of SSD over HDD

Scenario

Recently, I find SSD is on sale and so, I’m planning on buying one. However, I’m still hesitating for I’m not sure whether SSD will bring more benefits and if it’s worthy? So, could anyone tell me what are the advantages of SSD over HDD so that I can make my decision.

What’re the benefits of SSD over HDD?

Basically, HDD, short for Hard Disk Drive, is a traditional, spinning hard drive. HDD contains mechanical components like a platter, read/write head, and so on. It uses a rotating disk to read, write, store, and cache info. The speed of an HDD relies on its RPM or rotations per min. The range of these rotations is typically between 4200 RPM to 7200 RPM. The higher the RPM of an HDD is, the faster will your device be.

SSD, short for Solid State Drive, is capable of doing everything that HDD does. However, it stores data in flash memory chips, in the form of electrical charges. The data can be retained even when there is not any power present. Since SSD has no moving parts, it’s more energy-efficient and resists wear and tear better. This is the reason why SSD is faster than HDD.

More than the higher speed, there’re also more benefits of SSD over HDD, for example, SSD is quieter for it has no moving parts and it also generates less heat. To be specific, please refer to the chart below to learn all the benefits of SSD.

Upgrade HDD to SSD without reinstalling OS

Since SSD has so many advantages over HDD as you see, more and more people tend to replace their HDD with SSD and set SSD as the system drive and leave the HDD as a data drive. By setting SSD as the system drive, you can drastically reduce bootup time and enjoy faster multitasking and video editing as well.

Nevertheless, to set SSD as the system drive, you need to first move OS from the HDD to it. The traditional way of Windows reinstallation is tedious and complex and also costs plenty of time. In this case, migrating OS directly from HDD to SSD seems to be a better choice. But how?

This time, I’ll introduce the most impressive third-party disk management tool – AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional – to help with it. Within only a few clicks, you can migrate OS from the current hard disk to another disk quickly and securely.

Note:

Before migrating OS from MBR to GPT, please make sure the motherboard supports EFI or UEFI boot mode. Otherwise, you must convert GPT to MBR.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and wait until all disks and partitions appear on the main interface.

Step 2. Click “Clone” from the top toolbar, and select “Migrate OS” from the menu.

Step 3. Select the SSD as the destination disk for the OS migration. If there is no unallocated space on the SSD, you should tick the option “I want to delete all partitions on the disk to migrate system to the disk”. Once ticked, click on “Next” to proceed.

Step 4. Resize the created partition on the SSD and set a drive letter for it.

Step 5. Read the note that pops up. Then, hit “Finish”.

Step 6. Hit “Apply” > “Proceed” to execute the migration.

After migrating the OS from the old HDD to the new SSD, if you haven’t removed the HDD from your machine, you still can’t boot from the SSD. Now, there’re 2 choices left – remove the HDD or change the boot order in BIOS. Next, let’s see how to set the SSD as the first boot device via BIOS.

1. Power on your PC and keep hitting F12, F2, F8, Esc, or Del to enter the BIOS mode.

2. Access the boot menu and change the boot order. Use the arrow keys to move up or down the boot options until the SSD is set as the first boot device.

3. Exist BIOS after saving all the changes and finally, boot the computer again.

Conclusion

This time, you’ve learned the benefits of SSD over HDD and understood why you should set the SSD as the boot (system) drive. In order not to reinstall OS after the replacement, powerful third-party disk manager have been also introduced to help migrate OS from the HDD to the SSD.