Hard Drive, SSD, NVMe, M.2: What's Best?

With games getting bigger and countless photos and videos taking up space, it’s inevitable that you’ll start running out of storage space on your computer. You can get an external hard drive, but it’s hard to beat the speed and convenience of installing or replacing the storage inside your desktop or laptop. 

There are multiple kinds of internal storage devices that are broadly called “hard drives.” This includes the big traditional style, which are still called hard drives, as well as the smaller, faster solid-state drives (SSDs) that include the newer M.2 and NVMe versions. 

Each type has pros and cons, but one is likely best for your storage upgrade.

What can you install?

With most computers, you’re limited by the motherboard in what you can install. Most desktops will have the ability to add additional SSDs and hard drives, and some desktops and laptops have space for M.2s and NVMe. Keep in mind it’s often more difficult, if not impossible, to replace the storage in a laptop. It varies widely what’s possible without special tools and knowledge.

Before you grab your screwdriver to crack open your computer case, try this first. On Windows PCs, press the Windows and R keys on your keyboard, then type “msinfo32” (minus the quotation marks). Look for Baseboard Manufacturer and Baseboard Product. This is your motherboard. You can search for this online and see what type of connections are available. Some might be in use already.

Important note: No matter what drive you install, you’ll need to initialize it before Windows can use it.

Macs, in general, have less upgrade potential than your average Windows PC. Some models might have space for an additional drive, but no recent MacBook has an upgradable SSD — at least, not according to Apple. To find out more about your specific computer, Apple Support has a handy page to figure out your model if you’ve forgotten.

How much storage space do you need? I’d recommend at least a terabyte, as even that can fill up quickly with videos and a few games. Always get at least one size bigger than you think you need if you can afford it. You’ll eventually use the space.

Hard drive: Big and cheap

Pros: 

• Inexpensive per gigabyte (and most modern HDDs are multiple terabytes)
• Huge storage capacity
• Wide compatibility

Cons:

• Physically large (not for laptops or smaller desktops)
• Slow
• Often audible when active

Best for:

• Storage of photos, videos and other content
• Storage expansion on a budget

Worst for:

• Fast loading of games and other large files

Hard disk drives (HDDs) are the bulky boxes that have spinning platters inside. This is old, old technology, but they still work and are the least expensive option for big storage capacities. You can get over 10 terabytes of storage for around $200. For comparison, a $200 solid-state drive (SSD) likely only stores around 2TB. 

Because they have moving parts, they can’t read and write data as fast as SSDs. Most inexpensive external backup drives use slow 5,400rpm drives. There are faster 7,200rpm drives available, which will help speed up load times for games, software and large files. Still, if you’re using an HDD as the main drive for your computer, it will take longer to boot up compared to a solid-state drive. 

If you just want more storage, HDDs are the least expensive option. Their physical size might be a limitation depending on your computer, and the slower speed can be annoying if you’re using it regularly to access big files or load games. 

Solid-state drive (SATA SSD)

Pros: 

• Much faster and less delicate than a hard drive
• Smaller than a hard drive
• Better compatibility compared to M.2-style drives with older computers

Cons:

• Not as small as M.2 or as fast as NVMe (in 2.5-inch, SATA form anyway)

Best for:

• Game storage when NVMe-compatible drives aren’t available or affordable

Worst for:

• Large amounts of storage
• Long-term unpowered storage

Technically, all storage that’s not a hard drive is a solid-state drive (SSD). Inside, instead of moving platters, there’s just a series of microchips. They have no moving parts, and they’re silent. They come in different sizes and shapes, but for this section, I’m referring to the 2.5-inch wide style that’s common in desktop computers and some larger or older laptops. These connect via the SATA connection. SSDs offer much faster data transfer speeds compared to hard drives. So, for example, not only will a game load faster, but load times between levels and loading from saves will be noticeably faster as well. Some games require the performance of an SSD to run correctly.

SSDs are sort of a middle ground for computer storage. They’re smaller and faster than hard drives, but more expensive. They’re far larger than M.2-sized drives and slower than NVMe drives, but cheaper per gigabyte. If your computer has an HDD, you can typically replace it with a 2.5-inch SSD and see a big improvement in loading speeds. If it’s your boot (main) drive, you’ll need to reinstall your operating system, however.

The cost per gigabyte for SSDs is higher than HDDs, but that might not matter for you. A 2TB SSD can store dozens of games and tons of photos and videos, and it gives you faster access to all of it compared to an HDD. There’s long been the theory that SSDs aren’t as robust as HDDs. That even though they don’t have moving parts, their chips can’t handle as many read/write interactions compared to the magnetic platters in hard drives. Since SSDs have been on the market for a while, that doesn’t seem to be the case for normal use. However, you shouldn’t expect any storage device to last more than 3-5 years. I’ve had HDDs last a decade or more, SSDs die after a few years, and vice versa.

While it typically won’t be an issue for internal storage, if you’re considering an SSD for long-term backup, either in a rarely-used computer or external drive, consider that SSDs can lose data if left unpowered for long periods.

M.2 and NVMe

Pros: 

• Even faster than 2.5-inch SATA SSDs
• Small and flat

Cons:

• Expensive, especially NVMe drives
• Less common compatibility with older computers

Best for:

• Fast game and large file loading/access

Worst for:

M.2 is a connection type, while Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is how the data is transferred. There are SSDs that have an M.2-style connection but aren’t NVMe, and there are NVMe drives that aren’t M.2. The two often go hand in hand, however. In all cases, these are versions of SSDs, but because of their higher performance potential and different connection type, I’ve separated them out into their own category here.

If you’re looking for the fastest possible performance, an NVMe-compatible SSD is the way to go, assuming your motherboard supports it. NVMe uses the PCIe data channels on your motherboard for speeds several times faster than the more common SATA interface. NVMe drives tend to cost more, however, and unless you’re regularly dealing with large video files, the benefits might be marginal. A non-NVMe M.2 SSD is still going to be extremely fast. If your motherboard doesn’t support it, an NVMe SSD likely won’t fit, even though the connection and size are similar to non-NVMe drives.

There is a less-common version of the NVMe drive that uses an actual PCIe slot instead of M.2, but this isn’t as common. The drives themselves will work similarly.

What should you get?

• If you just want to back up a ton of files, including photos, videos and music: Hard drive. This is also the cheapest option.
• If you want a faster computer, especially when booting up and loading games: SSD, either SATA (2.5-inch) or M.2 style, depending on what your computer supports.
• If you want the fastest performance, especially for fast loading of games or big 4K video files: NVMe SSD (again, if your computer supports it).

Alternatives

While installing a new hard drive or SSD is one of the easier computer upgrades you can make, it still involves opening up your computer. If you’re hesitant to do that, there are two potential alternatives. 

The first is the aforementioned external hard drives. These can be connected to your computer via USB or on your home network (also called network-attached storage or NAS). If you just want storage to back up photos, videos and other important files, this is all you need. It will be slower than an internal drive, but simpler. You can also back up multiple computers more easily. You can’t use these for games, however. There are external hard drives designed for gaming, but when used with modern consoles, they are only for archiving games, not playing directly from the drives.

The other alternative (again for photos, videos, etc.) is cloud storage. You can enable automatic backup for entire computers or specific folders, and all your data is kept (hopefully) safely at a cloud storage data center. Larger storage amounts cost money, but it’s not typically that costly. 

I do both: a 16TB RAID 1 (redundant array of independent disks) for local backup and cloud storage. The RAID 1 has two mirrored hard drives, so when (not if) one dies, the other has identical data. The cloud storage mirrors the photos and videos off-site. 

Is that excessive? Not to me. There are only two kinds of hard drives, as the saying goes, those that have failed and those that will fail.

In addition to covering audio and display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations around the world, including nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, medieval castles, epic 10,000-mile road trips and more.

Also, check out Budget Travel for Dummies and his bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines. You can follow him on Instagram and YouTube.