Why do so many servers still use mechanical drives instead of solid-state drives?

Now SSDs have become the standard, it is not an indisputable fact that mechanical hard drives have a performance bottleneck in reading and writing speed compared with SSDs. The replacement of mechanical hard drives is just around the corner. At present, the newly installed users are basically using a single SSD, while users with higher capacity requirements will consider the solid + mechanical dual hard disk scheme. However, in servers, mechanical hard drives are still used, and only a few users will consider SSDs. So why do most servers still use mechanical hard drives instead of SSDs?

• Reason 1: Hard disk capacity

As we know, although SSDs can beat mechanical hard disks several blocks in speed and break through the performance bottleneck, the capacity of SSDS at the same price point is not as high as mechanical hard disks. At present, the mainstream SSDs only have 120GB capacity and 240GB capacity. Although SSDs also has a large capacity, they are very expensive. The storage of the server is an important mass data, which has a high requirement on the capacity of the hard disk. The single block capacity of the general server mechanical hard disk can reach more than 2TB, while the mainstream large-capacity server mechanical hard disk can reach about 10TB or even larger capacity.

• Reason 2: Price difference

Regular SSDS are much more expensive than mechanical drives, and although solid-state manufacturers are also offering enterprise-class SSDS, they are more expensive. If the servers are all solid-state drives, the cost will be very high, which the average enterprise cannot afford.

Why do most servers still use mechanical hard drives instead of solid-state drives?

• Reason 3: Data security

As we all know, the data in the server is priceless, in the words of the industry: “the hard disk is valuable, the data is priceless”, if the data is lost, it will cause inestimable loss. We know that if a mechanical hard drive is damaged, we can recover important data through professional data recovery. But because SSDs are chip-level storage, if the hard drive is lost, the data will be difficult to recover. In addition to capacity, this is the biggest advantage of mechanical hard drives.

Conclusion

From the perspective of capacity, cost, and security, mechanical hard disk is the absolute mainstream in the server field. However, at present, many servers have adopted SSD and mechanical hard disk solutions. Like home computers, SSD is used as the system disk, while the mechanical hard disk is used as storage to ensure speed, capacity, and security.