Data Recovery Digest

There are many different ways that you can store your data, including hard drives, SD cards and memory sticks. The type you choose for your day-to-day storage will most likely depend on your primary device type – smartphone data will be written to the internal drive and a SD card (if applicable), for example.

When it comes to computer storage, there are two main types of solutions: hard disk drives and solid state drives. For a long time only the former was available, with the latter being a relatively recent innovation in comparison.

While a HDD operates mechanically, meaning it has moving components inside that physically move, a SSD is a flash-based medium which means that it’s static inside. Not only does this mean SSDs are less prone to damage caused by vibrations or shock, they’re also quicker at reading and writing data. A HDD has to spin the platter in order to retrieve the data sequentially, while a SSD can find the data in a flash (pun not intended).

The SSD has a lot of advantages for it. It produces little noise, draws less power than a HDD and has a reduced failure rate. You might be wondering why everyone hasn’t switched to using them. That’s because the capacity on offer isn’t as high as a HDD and they’re also far more expensive. They’re dropping over time as they become easier to manufacturer and economies of scale kick in, but you’re still going to get far more storage for your buck on a HDD than you will a SSD.

If you’ve suffered data loss and are using a program like R-Studio to recover your data then you might be wondering what the best device to send your recovered data to is: HDD or SSD? That depends on a few factors.

Firstly, most people are more likely to have a secondary HDD available than they are a SSD, but that’s not really a deciding factor. The important thing here is whether your recovery drive is then going to become an archive. An archive is repository for your data and can be a static snapshot if you desire. If that’s what you’re after, you’re much better off opting for the HDD simply because it’s much cheaper. There’s no point wasting archive storage on an expensive and speedy SSD.

The real point comes in the fact that although the SSD will write the recovery data to it quicker, that doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. That’s going to be a one-off procedure and although it’ll take a bit longer to recover the data to it, that’s still not worth splashing out on a SSD just for the fact.

However, if the recovery drive is going to become your main drive, perhaps because your previous one is actually failing or broken, it does make sense to use an SSD. You’ll find it more reliable and you’ll get quicker read and write times – the upgrade could be beneficial to you in the long-term.