Here are some tips to help you decide between an SSD, hybrid, or hard disk drive. Then there are solid-state hybrid drives, which combine both technologies to deliver the advantages of HDDs and SSDs in one package. However, these aren’t as pronounced compared to going full-bore with either an SSD or an HDD. SSHDs also possess both technologies’ disadvantages, though on a lesser scale. A similar solid-state drive can cost four to eight times as much, though prices have gone down in recent years. Hybrid drives usually fall in the middle for cost and are an especially popular option for internal hard drives. The Sandisk Extreme 500 Portable SSD, for example, is typically four times faster compared to magnetic-platter external drives. Hybrids also get close to SSD speeds but at a lower price. When you choose an external drive, ensure it’s rated for the fastest interface speed (for example, USB 3.1) your computer supports. SSHDs present a mixed speed bag. For an SSHD to work well, the drive controller caches commonly used files in the flash component, rather than reading and writing from the magnetic-platter component. That process only works for predictable file access, for example, common operating-system files. If you work on many files and then never come back to those files, as is the case with a computer that processes one-off video files, the drive controller can’t efficiently predict what data to stage in the flash component. This leads to overall performance that isn’t significantly better than a base HDD. At lower capacities, you can go extra tiny with flash memory options such as the Leef Supra 3.0, for example. Or the Sandisk Ultra Fit, which can squeeze 128 GB in one small package. These are so tiny that’s it’s easy to lose one. Durability is especially relevant for outdoor enthusiasts or photographers and videographers. SSDs can still fail, though.
