Of course, if we start to remember, many of us remembered the size of the hard drives of our first computers, especially if we are among those who have previously browsed computers without any storage capacity, which rely on floppy disks, cartridges and other external media. Installing the operating system and software on the first disks was a convenience we didn’t want to give up.

The size of these hard drives has evolved over the years, from having to do watermarks to install and store everything we wanted to reaching the point where we could release our digital Diogens. It was a sensational development, although in the meantime we had to suffer a bit with file compressors and even some other fear with technologies like DoubleSpace, of painful memory.

Everything went well for the hard drives until all of a sudden interest in a new storage medium began technology companies and also hand in hand with users. The memory cards and USB sticks, which soon became a branch of USB MP3 players, brought us closer to a new medium, energy-independent flash memory, which already at that time incredibly promised further use.

The cost of mega, later for the concert was disproportionately higher than for hard drives, so they continued to support internal PC storage, although it is true that, as with all new technologies, its price is gradually falling and, in a more than known relationship, its demand is increasing. At the end of the first decade of this century, the first SSDs for internal PC use will begin to appear, and those who try them will remain open-mouthed over the leap in performance they represent.

And so we get to 2012, to October 23, when Apple announces its Fusion Drive technology, a storage unit that combines a mechanical hard disk (the usual one) and NAND flash memory. An innovative design that offers storage capacity similar to the capacity of many hard drives at the time, terabyte, but with 128 gigabytes of very high performance (compared). The operating system chose what was stored in the mechanical part and what went into the flash memory. For many people, this was their first experience with flash storage on a PC.

Since the SSD race began to add much more speedand hard drives have begun to see their demand decline. They continued (and still continue) to offer the best price / capacity ratio, moreover with much higher capacities than SSDs, but the difference in performance meant a qualitative leap that allowed the systems to significantly increase performance in certain tasks.

We have witnessed since then because these new speeds offered virtually instant starts, massively faster processing of large volumes of data and games with spectacular image quality in games (yes, I know, it doesn’t just matter the storage, but it’s a key factor). Gradually, we began to find out how many systems began to mount medium-capacity SSDs, supplemented by large-capacity hard drives.

Today youIt is still possible to find such combinations on desktop computers, but not on notebookswhere hard disks are virtually non-existent. And precisely because of their design, the lack of mobile elements and a much more compact size add to the performance of SSDs.

We at MuyComputer have been following this change for years. As early as 2017, we told you how to make the jump, and when we asked you what your options were, SSDs have already made a big difference over hard drives. Just a few days ago we told you that Microsoft wants to definitely leave the hard drives and today we know from WccfTech that an independent video game studio Ebb Software has identified the use of an SSD as a technical requirement for its long-awaited Scorn game.

In fact, this is nothing new. Many other titles either require it, or at least highly, highly recommend it. And it’s logical, I don’t even want to imagine what a Microsoft Flight Simulator with mechanical hard drives would be like. A bottleneck would simply be unsustainable. Surprisingly, we also see the development of independent studies that exclude hard drives as a means of installing their software.

Does that mean the hard drives are dead? The truth is, no. Some manufacturers continue to innovate in this area, with faster, more reliable disks and unthinkable SSD capacities. from workstations in which huge volumes of data are processed up serversthe mechanical hard drive still has life ahead of it and we will certainly continue to depend on it indirectly in the short and medium term.

It’s different to talk about the present and even more about the future of hard drives on the computers we use most often. I have said before that if we are talking about notebooks, the jump is practically complete and only in case of need for huge storage capacity in desktops, and it is not possible to supply external storage media, cloud, etc., it makes sense to use a hybrid model, ie SSD as the primary disk and mechanical hard disk as a secondary disk.

And yes, today it is possible to build a PC that is supported exclusively by a mechanical hard drive, the problem is that there are so many limitations (and those that come) that it would be a mistake to undoubtedly pay very, very expensively.

What do you think? Have you made the leap and are you only using SSD storage, or are you still using mechanical hard drives? And if so, do you use them as an add-on to the SSD or as the primary system drive? And in a slightly more nostalgic key, Do you remember the capacity of your first hard drive? Any ingenuity to make the most of its capacity? Any problem you wanted to throw it out the window for?