Types of Laptop Storage: SSD vs HDD vs eMMC

It is important to understand the types of storage media built into a laptop as it ultimately affects its overall performance, storage capacity and pricing. Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid-State Drive (SDD) and embedded MultiMedia Card (eMMC) are the 3 main types of storage media used in laptops today.

In this article, we’ll be walking you through the key differences between these storage media. By the end of this article, you’ll know how to pick a storage media that best fits your needs.

3 Most Common Storage Drives

1. Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

A HDD, which is short for hard disk drive, is now considered a legacy internal storage device for laptops. As seen in the diagram above, a HDD is made up of many mechanical parts which is used to read and write data. With many mechanical parts involved, a HDD is considerately more fragile and less effective.

HDDs were the most popular storage device for laptops prior to the introduction of SDDs. Though HDDs are slowly phasing out, they are still fairly commonly found in low and mid-tier laptops. It is also common to find both HDDs and SSDs present in a laptop.

2. Solid-State Drive (SDD)

As the name suggests, a Solid-State Drive (SSD) stores information in microchips instead of having it written by a mechanical arm as seen in a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). To put it simply, an SSD is like a larger and slightly more sophisticated USB stick.

Thanks to not having any mechanical parts involved, an SSD outperforms a HDD in speed, size and durability. Although SSDs have been around for several decades, it has only become more readily available in the market in recent years. With economies of scale in play, SSDs have become a lot more affordable and continue to dominate the market as the preferred storage device for laptops.

There are 2 main types of SSDs: SATA SSD and NVMe SSD. The key difference between the two is the interface protocol it uses. NVMe SSD works with PCI Express (PCI-e) which allows for even quicker transfer of data. 

3. Embedded Multimedia Card (eMMC)

An Embedded Multimedia Card (eMMC) is embedded directly onto the motherboard thus its name. An eMMC is most commonly found in phones and tablets but occasionally also found in low-tier laptops such as chromebooks. 

While eMMCs outperforms HDDs in terms of read and write speed, an eMMC is still inferior to an SSD. Aside from that, an eMMC only provides a minimal storage support of 64GB or 128GB. Nevertheless, eMMCs are the smallest in size amongst the 3 types of storage, making it great for producing cheap and lightweight laptops. 

Which is better?

With a better understanding of the different types of storage, we can easily conclude that a laptop with an SSD would be the best option for speed and reliability. Nevertheless, if you find yourself under a budget constraint, you may consider the following:

1. Opt for a laptop with hybrid storage / dual storage option.

Laptops such as the Acer Extensa 15 and Asus Vivobook offers dual-storage option. With this, users can opt for a low storage capacity SSD and complement it with a high storage capacity HDD. The SSD will mainly be used for booting the operating system and frequently used applications while the HDD will be used to store all long-term media files like videos, photos and other documents.

2. Leveraging on external storage devices.

With USB 3.0 being available on most laptops today, there is always the option to opt for a lower built-in SSD and purchase an external SSD or HDD at a later time. USB 3.0 supports read and write speed of up to 600 MB/s which is close to the max speed of a typical SATA SSD. As such, users will not have any issues running most games directly from an external SSD. A great budget external SSD to consider would be Samsung 860 Evo

To conclude this article on the different types of laptop storage, we’ve included a comparison table between SSDs and HDDs that you may refer to.

Attribute	SSD (Solid State Drive)	HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
Battery Life/Power Draw	Utilizes an average of 2-3 watts	Utilizes an average of 6-7 watts
Cost	~ MYR 0.52/GB for a 1TB drive	~ MYR 0.18/GB for a 1TB drive
Capacity	Capped at 1TB for notebooks	Capped 2 TB for notebooks
Operating System Boot-Time	Average boot time of 10-13 seconds	Average boot time of 30-40 seconds
Noise	No sound produced because of the lack of moving parts	Spinning and clicks are audible and can be heard
Vibration	No vibration produced as there are no moving parts	Vibrations are produced because of the platters’ spinning
Heat Produced	Lack of moving parts and low power draw equals less heat	High power draw and the presence of moving parts mean more heat production than SSD
Write Speed/File Copy	SSD Sata: ~ 500MB/s SSD NVMe: ~ 3000MB/s	50 MB/s to up to 120 MB/s
Effect of Magnetism	Safe from magnetism effects	Data can be erased by magnets