Hard Drive vs Solid State Drive
Hard Drive vs Solid State Drive
The difference between a HDD and SSD and what data destruction looks like for both
Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) depend on rapidly rotating disks with a magnetic surface. A moving actuator arm reads and writes data on the rotating disks.
Solid State Drives (SSDs) on the other hand are storage devices comprised of integrated electrical circuits used to store data. They are also known as flash drives or solid-state disks.
SSDs and HDDs differ in lifespan, reliability, performance, as well as how need to be destroyed.
Advantages of SSDs vs. HDDs
The traditional spinning hard drive is basic non-volatile storage that doesn’t disappear when you turn off the system, unlike data stored in RAM. HDD’s have moving mechanical parts, unlike solid-state drives that do not contain any moving parts.
Advantages of a hard disk drive include:
- Cost effective
- Data is easily recoverable
- Large amounts of storage
- Long lifespan
SSD’s are usually smaller than HDDs and give manufacturers more flexibility in design.
Other advantages of SSDs include:
- Quiet
- Fast read/write speeds
- Uses less power
- Fast boot and application loading speeds
The main disadvantages are it’s slow and noisy. It uses a lot of power and takes longer to boot and load applications.
A solid-state drive performs similar functions as a hard drive but the information is stored on interconnected flash memory chips that hold data even without power. These are a different kind than those used in USB thumb drives and are faster, more reliable, and more expensive.
Destruction of SSDs and HDDs
Since data is stored magnetically on hard disk drives and in solid-state drives it is written electronically, they need to be destroyed differently.
And with the basic understanding of the way the data is written, we can categorize destruction into three methods: software-based erasure, degaussing, and physical media destruction.
Software-based erasure has been around for a long time and new standards are being created and adopted all the time. It was originally designed for HDDs because it writes a pattern of data to each sector of the disk overwriting the original data and making it uncoverable. However, for media like SSDs, this is not good for destruction because the software is not able to control the specific region the data is written to. Some argue that using TRIM command or other commands built into SSDs help ensure erasure, but this is not successful in removing all the data from the drive. So, it’s an ok method for HDD destruction, but not the best solution for SSDs.
Hardware-based degaussing is an effective alternative to software erasure. Degaussers work by sending magnetic pulses through the media. This happens very quickly in HDDs because it reorients the bits on the disk, destroying user data and creating an HDD that is inoperable.
For SSDs, information is stored electronically, so this method is also not as effective.
The most secure way to destroy both SSD and HDDs is physical media destruction. This involves crushing and shredding the media into pieces small enough that not even a single chip escapes damage.
Because of the physical differences and characteristics of the HDDs and SSDs, short of needing to shred them both into tiny bits, it is not possible to design a single, practically-sized crushing machine reliable enough to destroy both types of media to the extent that guarantees no data can be retrieved.
In a dual-purpose HDD/SSD destroyer, you have tradeoffs in performance of either mode and the need for adapters that diminish the functionality of the ancillary destruction mode.
You will find many HDD destroyers bend or fold hard drive and magnetic storage platters leaving the HDD physically inoperable, however with platters intact and residual data that can be recovered with forensic techniques.
We carry different product lines for HDD and SSD destroyers that are reliable, compact, portable, fully automated, OSHA workplace compliant, and more.
The DIN 66399 standard divides data media categories into seven security levels—the higher the security level the smaller the particles. All of our HDD crushers are an H4 level and all of our SSD crushers are an E4 level. Our Disintegrators are rated E6 and our Dual Sanitizer (combined Degausser and Crusher) are the highest security level for magnetic as recommended by the NSA.
