The Benefits of Solid State Drive (SSD) Hosting Over Conventional Hard Disc Drives
When shopping for WordPress hosting or other web hosting, you will probably see the hosting advertised as either HDD or SSD. These three little letters represent two types of storage from the host. While both options work well for storing files, there are several advantages with SSD hosting which uses new technology for better security, faster hosting speeds, and reduced power consumption.
What’s the Difference Between HDD and SSD?
HDD or “hard disc drive” refers to older hard drives that use a physical disc that spins and stores data. To access data on the hard drive, there will always be a delay for the disc to spin. HDDs have been used for decades although they are being slowly replaced by solid state drives or SSDs.
A solid state drive has no physical disc that spins. Instead, your data is stored on microchips. An SSD is much faster and more reliable at accessing data because it does not rely on moving parts. It works much like a USB drive and uses non-volatile memory to store your data, not RAM, so no information is lost when the drive is turned off. While SSD technology is a bit more expensive than HDD hosting, it comes with several advantages worth considering.
Why Choose SSD Hosting?
Not sure if it’s worth it to make the investment in SSD technology? Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy by switching to solid state drive technology over conventional HDD hosting.
#1. SSD offers faster hosting
Speed is essential to the performance of your website. Your users expect your webpages to load in 3 seconds or less. A solid state drive is around 4 times faster than a hard disc drive with 0.2 millisecond write/read speeds compared to 15-20 milliseconds for HDDs. Websites that are made using content management systems like WordPress and Magento can have thousands of plugins, themes, and pages that need to load and work when a user visits the site. Simply entering a dynamic website can trigger several database queries. A SSD can read multiple points of data at the same time to increase browsing speed and load times.
#2. SSD is more reliable
HDDs can be irreversibly damaged if they are dropped and they are very vulnerable to physical damage. In fact, even minor mishandling of an HDD can cause data loss. SSDs do not have moving parts and they are not easy to damage. Drops and vibration will not cause data loss and an SSD does not lose data even if the power is disconnected.
#3. Uses less power
If you want to make an eco-friendly decision, it’s hard to beat solid state drives. SSD technology requires much less power than HDD drives. On average, an SSD will use 80% less energy than an HDD. The more drives the host uses, the more significant the energy savings.
#4. SSDs are better for database-intensive websites
If you run a database-intensive website like an E-Commerce or WordPress site, you will experience a boost in performance by switching to SSD over HDD hosting.
SSD technology isn’t just faster and more reliable; it’s the future. Hit2Web uses only SSDs for hosting to give you and your visitors the best possible experience.