New laptop - Solid state or HDD?
Feb 19, 2021, 6:17 pm
#91
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: in the vicinity of SFO
Programs: AA 2MM (LT-PLT, PPro for this year)
Posts: 19,781
Thank you, try the fish!
That said, I can't recommend having a spinning rust HDD in a laptop even if it's a larger machine that can take two drives (not many of those left, unless it's two M.2 drives) - the durability of SSDs is worth the extra cost, and very large SATA SSDs can be had on sale quite inexpensively. At < US$100 per terabyte for 1TB and 2TB drives (sadly 4TB are still more expensive than that) it really doesn't make sense to use HDDs for mobile use.
For non-mobile use, HDDs are still worthwhile if you need more than 2TB of capacity but for smaller capacities and mobile use they're best regarded as obsolete.
That said, I can't recommend having a spinning rust HDD in a laptop even if it's a larger machine that can take two drives (not many of those left, unless it's two M.2 drives) - the durability of SSDs is worth the extra cost, and very large SATA SSDs can be had on sale quite inexpensively. At < US$100 per terabyte for 1TB and 2TB drives (sadly 4TB are still more expensive than that) it really doesn't make sense to use HDDs for mobile use.
For non-mobile use, HDDs are still worthwhile if you need more than 2TB of capacity but for smaller capacities and mobile use they're best regarded as obsolete.
