Farewell hard drives – hello SSDs
Now is the time for all companies to seriously consider Solid State Drives (SSDs) to replace the traditional hard disk drives (HDD) that have whirred around inside office PCs for many years.
This blog was originally published to the website of CNC, who are now the Brighton branch of FluidOne.
SSDs are essentially flash drives just like the ubiquitous USB sticks that we all know and love which replaced floppy disks previously.
The difference is that SSDs are fixed components in many new servers, laptops, tablets and other smart devices. They take up much less space than an HDD and you can rewrite data onto them many more times than on a hard drive.
Gary Jowett from Computer & Network Consultants in Brighton says: “Businesses looking to upgrade their IT services should now buy equipment fitted with SSDs because hard drives will soon become a thing of the past. Buying new kit fitted with hard drives may appear cheaper but it’s a step in the wrong direction – a false economy which won’t benefit your business in the long run.”
Greater capacity
When it comes to supporting an entire office network, SSDs are the obvious choice because of the increased storage capacity these offer.
The largest hard drive available to support your office systems is 10TB and 3.5 inches in diameter meaning the maximum number of hard drives that can be fitted in a standard 2U server is 12. By contrast, the same server could be fitted with 24 SSDs – each with 16TB capacity.
And the real game changer on the horizon is the arrival of 3D NAND technology for solid state drives as Intel’s video explains. Storage capacity will increase massively through a new stacking technique to accommodate more data capacity in the same space. It’s a bit like building skyscrapers to house more people on Manhattan Island in New York. The die-shaped SSDs will provide a three-dimensional way to pack away much more data.
Independent advice in Sussex
As manufacturers respond to the changing demands of the market, there will still be cheap PCs and laptops for sale which are fitted with hard drives.
However, beware as these will not serve the ever-changing IT requirements of your company hence why it’s a good idea to speak to an independent consultant first when you decide to upgrade your IT. He or she will have more knowledge about the different hardware that’s available and will have supported the needs of similar organisations in the past.
