If have been using a laptop or computer running a traditional hard drive, you have probably heard of solid-state drives (SSD) and how wonderful everyone claims they are. We would all love to use a device with an SSD onboard but most of us aren’t comfortable with replacing the internal hard drives in our laptops. It means figuring out a bunch of specifications and standards, buying a drive, then opening up the laptop, possibly voiding warranty and more.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Solid state drives have now made their way into external drives, the kind we would normally use to store date on and move about. From the outside, these drives look like any other external hard drive but inside lie solid state drives, which are as people claim, way better!
These drives are just as compact and, in some cases, maybe even smaller than traditional external hard drives since they can store large amounts of data in tiny spaces. They are much lighter since they don’t have use complex machinery used inside hard drives. Most hard drives have heavy platters, motors, magnets and heavy casings to enclose all of it. This makes them quite heavy. In fact, most hard drives on computers are much heavier than the laptop ones. Solid state drives technically could be much smaller. Some external solid-state drives can be a fourth of the weight of a traditional external hard drive, weighing as little as 50g.
Some of the other benefits of solid-state drives are that they consume very little power. This also means longer battery life and less heating since there aren’t any moving parts in them. You also have to fear less about dropping and damaging these drives although we wouldn’t recommend doing it. Some external SSDs are rated to be shock and dust resistant as well. Solid state drives can also be more reliable, considering they don’t have any moving parts and they run much cooler. Some of these drives ship with USB Type-C connectors as well, so you can use them with modern laptops if you wish. Most of them come with the standard USB Type A connector that we see pen drives and every other major USB accessory.
The biggest benefit that solid-state drives bring, are not the aesthetics and lightness, but pure brute performance. Solid state drives can be anywhere between 5 to 10, to 20 times faster than traditional hard drives, depending on the model you purchase. Most entry-level SSDs can transfer data at speeds in excess of 400MB/s, while most laptop hard drives hover around the 100MB/s mark. However, these are external SSD drives which means they connect to your laptop or computer using a USB port. Does that not hamper performance?
Laptops and PCs today come with USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 ports which offer practically the same performance as an internal SSD. Most hard drives at best, use only a fraction of that USB performance but SSDs are much faster, so they are not bottlenecked. So, in simple words if you were to use an external solid-state drive connected over USB to your laptop or PC, you should see the same kind of performance that you see if the drive internally built into your machine. This idea opened up a whole world of possibilities.
External drives can be used like any other storage drive to store data, photos, music, movies but it also brings in the possibility of installing software that would normally take much longer to load on your laptop or PC. You could start by installing regularly used software on the solid-state drive rather than on the internal hard drive. You could also move your Steam games folder from your hard drive to the SSD. That way, you could load games much faster than usual. You could use the external solid-state drive to dump all your video editing projects on, since video editing can be quite strenuous, and it requires good read and write performance.
Some enthusiasts have gone as far as to install alternate operating systems on the external SSD, so their PC or laptop is snappy. Many people also choose multi-boot setups where their primary operating system, say Windows is installed on your laptop but they also have a Linux installation installed on the solid-state drive that they can choose to boot from.
Solid state drives are now being used in external drives because they are a lot more affordable than they used to be. For example, a 500 GB SSD which would cost no less than Rs. 15,000 two years or so back, now costs less than half that. Similarly, you can also find models with higher capacities such as 1TB priced anywhere between Rs. 8,000 and Rs. 10,000. This may still be more than what you pay for an external hard drive but the performance and all the other benefits make it well worth the price.
External solid-state drives are great for practically everyone. Anyone with an an older laptop wanting to improve performance will find this to be an convenient solution. You don’t have to worry about the kind of SSD interface your laptop has. You can simply plug it into a USB 3 or USB 3.1 port and get going in seconds. It’s also handy if you already have a laptop or PC with a solid-state drive inside but you don’t want the hassle of replacing it with a higher capacity one.
Reliance Digital is a good place to find some great external solid drives, from brands such as Western Digital, Seagate and Sandisk. If you want to see what these products look like, you can head over to your nearest Reliance Digital store, or even order it online and have it delivered to your doorstep. If you are planning on upgrading to a laptop with an SSD in it, just ask one of our sales executives and they’ll help you out.
