Price#

HDDs are able to hold more data than an SSD for the price you'll pay for it. This is often referred to as the dollar-to-GB ratio, which is calculated by taking the price of HDD and dividing it by how many GBs of storage it gives you.

At the time of writing you can get a 1TB - or 1,000 GB - HDD online for AUD$45. To work out the dollar:GB ratio we divide the price by the number of GBs we're buying. In this $45 / 1,000GB. That ratio is 0.045 for every 1 GB. For $45 we're paying $0.045 cents for every GB.

The same SSD (1TB; 1,000GB) at the point in time is $115, or $0.115 cents per GB. Over double the cost.

HDDs have another advantage too: you can currently buy consumer grade HDDs that offer 18TBs in size - that's 18,000 GBs - for $755 or $0.042 per GB (less than five cents again). The largest SSD I was able to find online at the consumer level was 8TB (8,000GB) and it cost $855. It's ratio is $0.106 per GB or over double the cost again.

So in essense HDDs can offer you extremely large data storage volumes for very little money. SSDs have yet to catch up but trust me when I say they're getting there.