by Gene Poschman

Created on: July 11, 2009   Last Updated: July 14, 2009

Which is better to upgrade your computer's memory, a Solid State Drive or a traditional hard drive?

In layman terms and the immortal words of Miss Mona Lisa Vito, player by Marisa Tomei, "It's a bullshit question."

Why is it a bullshit question?

Because computer memory which is accessed by the CPU is not stored on a traditional hard drive directly, it is stored in RAM, not a male sheep, but random access memory or ROM, read only memory. Prom's (programmable read only memory) can also be used, but it is still computer memory.

Comparing a Solid-State drive to a traditional spinning hard drive is about storage not memory. Is that important? Ever try scrambling eggs in a toaster? You might get away with it, but most likely you would ruin the eggs, the toaster, and possibly electrocute yourself. It is that important to know the difference.

Memory is the workspace where the CPU actively performs on what is going on. Storage is where files and programs are kept. Computers have a lot less memory than they do storage.

Which is better, a Solid-State Drive or a spinning hard drive? A solid-state drive is better because it is solid-state memory. Don't get you shorts all in a twist; it is not my fault that the industry calls the computer scratch pad memory and little magnetized particles on silica memory.

What are the main differences between solid-state memory and a spinning hard drive?

One is speed. In simple terms it is the amount of time from when the CPU requests information from storage, to when it is delivered to be processed. Or when information can be written back to storage.

A hard drive is as fast as it spins, because that is as fast as the read/write head above and below a disk can read data off a track or write data on to a track. To that time you must add latency. That means that when the request for information is received the read/write head may not be in the exact place off the disk to start reading, so it must wait until the beginning of the data gets to it. If the data starting point just passed the read/write head when the request was made, then the wait or latency is the time it takes for the data to come in alignment with the read/write head again.

Accessing data on a solid-state drive happens almost at the speed of an electron passing through a wire, which is a lot faster, than a spinning disk.

Reliability is another advantage for the solid-state drive. The solid-state drive has no moving parts so there is less to break down.
Size is also an advantage for a solid-state drive. This is not as significant now as it will be in the future because solid-state is getting ever smaller.

Solid-state drives are still more expensive than spinning hard drives but that will soon change if it hasn't from the time I started writing this article.

Ironically I think it is more important that as a consumer, you should understand what you are buying as opposed to which is better. You can always read the pros and cons of equipment in a number of different places, and you should. But if you go looking for a spinning hard disk to plug into your memory slot on your computer you could end up in a court room, and if you don't have a Cousin Vinny...

Learn more about this author, Gene Poschman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.