Types of technology used in hard drives:
The types of technology currently used in computer hard disks fall into 3 categories, solid-state drives, magnetic drives, and hybrid drives.
SSD-
SSDs have started to replace HDDs owing to the advantage they have over the HDDs. SSD hard disks are one of the fastest types of hard drives currently in the market. The SSD hard drive will allow us to access the data in a fraction of a millisecond which in turn will result in shorter boot times.
What makes the SSD hard disk technology different from other hard disks is that they don't have any moving parts inside them and like previous models of computer hard disks they didn't rely on magnetism to store data. The SSD hard drive relies on flash memory technology, and instead of using motors and disks with magnetic coatings, they rely on integrated circuits and solid-state electronics to store data.
So compared to magnetic hard drives the SSD hard drives are faster, more durable, and consume less power. Most people are preferring SSD hard disks for laptops and recently companies like SanDisk, Samsung have started to offer external SSD hard drives.
Magnetic Hard drives-
Magnetic hard drives rely on rotating magnetic disks called platters with magnetic coating and motors to move the head to read and write the data into the hard drives.
The magnetic hard drives as the name suggest relying on the principles of magnetism to read and write the data. The data is stored in circular regions of the disk that are known as tracks which in turn are divided into sectors that contain blocks of data. Despite them being slower than SSD hard disks and consuming more power, people still buy them as they are cheaper and have higher capacity compared to SSDs.
Most of the internal hard disk or desktop drive and the external hard disk are using magnetic hard drives to store data.
Hybrid hard drives-
Hybrid hard drives are types of hard drives that make use of both platters and flash memory. The hybrid hard drives are the perfect example of the term “best of both worlds. The hybrid hard drive is a kind of storage device that combines the faster storage capabilities of an SSD hard disk with the higher storage capacity of magnetic hard drives.
Many power users and gamers are using both HDD and SSD, and even in some cases even an external HDD or USB hard disk. They will be using the SSD hard drive for storing system files, programs, and application data in order to ensure the smooth running of their computers whereas the magnetic external hard drive or external HDD will be used for media, photo collections, etc and those that don't need files that don't need to be accessed quickly.
The hybrid hard drive is magnetic drives with SSD storage, to the OS the hard drive will appear as a single drive. These kinds of hard drives will come with a pre-installed firmware that decides what will be and what will not be stored in the SDD. The SSD portion of the hard drive will act as a cache and frequently accessed files like the OS and all will be stored in the SSD hard drive, despite it being a cache memory it's non-volatile i.e. the data stored will persist across reboots.
Internal vs External Confusion-
There isn't much difference between an external hard disk drive and an internal hard disk while an internal drive is built into the desktop or laptop while an external HDD is not. A computer can function without an external pc hard disk or laptop HDD but it will not be able to function without an internal pc hard disk/desktop drive.
Most people use a portable hard disk to back up their data as part of a contingency plan and also to store those files which they don't have the use of on a frequent basis.
Conclusion: SSD vs HDD vs Hybrid
One of the frequently asked queries in almost all of the popular hardware sites is that which is the best option is to have a computer running on hybrid HDD or a combination of SSD and mechanical HDD. According to hardware experts, it's better to go with a combination of SSD plus mechanical HDD for either desktop or laptops.
