HDD vs SSD for a travel laptop?
I'm thinking about getting a (cheap) used Thinkpad X2n0 (n in {3,4,5,6}) for traveling. Obviously an SSD is usually preferable but my question is focusing on the aspect of robustness constrained by price given that a notebook that you travel with will experience occasional bumping.
How delicate are HDDs in your experience?
Best Answer
I was just going to leave you with Andrew's answer, but then I saw you tagged your question backpacking, so I figured I have something to add.
You absolutely should use an SSD instead of HDD. I spent several months on a bicycle tour of North America last year and took a brand new ThinkPad E570 with me. Instead of a hard drive I installed a 256GB NVMe drive and a 1TB SSD. I also had an external rotational hard drive in a USB enclosure, which I occasionally brought out to store large video files and other backups.
It was bumped around repeatedly and took a lot of cosmetic damage. I broke the screen twice, somehow killed the DVD burner, and completely wore out the left button on the trackpad.
But I had thought ahead and got next-day on site service, which I made liberal use of. Each time they came to wherever I was, provided it had an address, and fixed it the next day as promised.
With all that, though, nothing ever went wrong with any of the drives.
I would recommend you strongly consider getting a new laptop with such an on-site warranty service, if your budget allows it. You may end up having to use it, and if you do you'll be very glad you had it.
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