Netbooks offer three storage options: hard drives, solid state drives, and a combination of the two. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each type of storage option, will help you choose the best netbook for your needs.
Hard Drive Storage
Hard drive storage is the most common option. The advantages are obvious. First hard drives offer much more storage. Typically netbooks ship with 160 GB of storage. Second, hard drives are less expensive than the other options, resulting in a cheaper overall price for the netbook.
The disadvantages of the hard drive storage are threefold. First, hard drives are more fragile than solid state drives, thus they are more susceptible to data loss if the netbook is dropped. Second, hard drives use a lot of power, resulting in a shorter battery life between charges. And finally, hard drives are thicker than solid state drives which hampers the overall netbook design.
Solid State Drives
Solid state drives are extremely stable because they have no moving parts. In addition, solid state drives are very thin, which means the netbook itself is thinner and lighter weight.
There are two major disadvantages of the solid state drive. First, solid state drives are expensive. Second, they have a much smaller storage capacity than conventional hard drives. Typically the maximum storage capability of a solid state drive is 16 GB.
Hard Drive and Solid State Combo
Although hard to find, netbooks that offer a combination of a solid state drive and hard drive offer the best of both worlds. The solid state drive holds critical files and the operating system and the hard drive stores the data and media files.