Mechanical Hard disk Drive
There are two types of permanent memory storage:
“Traditional” hard disk drives (HDD’s):
These consists of a spinning platter and a mechanical arm which moves a “head” across the spinning surface. The data is recorded or read only when the head(s) get(s) to the correct position, and the correct sectors on the spinning platter(s) move beneat the head(s).
There is obviously a time lag involved in this procedure.
256 Gb Solid State Drives
Solid state hard drives (SSD’s):
These are not mechanical and have no moving parts. Data is read from a storage matrix of memory chips in a similar way to how RAM is read. It takes a bit longer to read from a static solid state drive when compared to reading from a dynamic random access memory chip, but this read and write speed is very much faster than with a traditional mechanical hard drive. The disadvantage is that byte for byte, a solid state drive is much more expensive (more than 20x more expensive) than a mechanical hard drive.
In a high-end CAD / graphics machine the ideal situation is to have one of each. A solid state drive for the operating system and application programs, with a fast mechanical hard drive for data storage.
Solid State Hard drives range from 16Gb to 512Gb and vary in price from R600 to R5000
while mechanical drives ranging in size from 250Gb to 3Tb and a price range of R300 to R2000
