HDD

HDDs, or hard disk drives, have been a mainstay in the world of servers for many years. Despite the growing popularity of SSDs and NVMe drives, HDDs still have an important place in the server landscape due to their high capacity and low cost per gigabyte.

HDDs use spinning disks to read and write data, with the disks typically spinning at 7200 RPM or higher. The data is read and written using a magnetic head that moves across the surface of the disk. This technology has been around for decades, and it has been refined over time to improve performance and reliability.

When it comes to servers, HDDs are commonly used for storing large amounts of data that does not need to be accessed frequently or quickly. This includes things like archives, backups, and media files. HDDs are also commonly used in RAID configurations to provide redundancy and improve data availability.

One of the main advantages of HDDs is their cost per gigabyte, which is significantly lower than that of SSDs and NVMe drives. This makes them a cost-effective option for organizations that need to store large amounts of data. Additionally, HDDs are available in a wide range of capacities, with some models offering up to 18 terabytes of storage.

However, HDDs are not without their drawbacks. Compared to SSDs and NVMe drives, they are much slower at reading and writing data. This can lead to slower application performance and longer load times. Additionally, because HDDs have moving parts, they are more susceptible to failure than SSDs and NVMe drives.

Overall, HDDs remain an important part of the server landscape due to their high capacity and low cost per gigabyte. However, organizations that require fast access to their data or need to run high-performance applications should consider using SSDs or NVMe drives instead.