Relevant research shows that SSDs are more power efficient than traditional hard drives, but the overall production process generates higher carbon emissions than traditional hard drives.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of British Columbiadevelopment, the carbon emissions generated by the SSD production process will be higher than those of traditional hard drives, and may even increase linearly.
The researchers also pointed out that the carbon emissions generated by SSDs and traditional hard drives vary depending on different usage scenarios. For example, during normal operation of a PC device using an SSD, the carbon emissions generated by the SSD may account for approximately 38%, while the traditional hard drive accounts for approximately 9%, and the CPU accounts for 11%. Other carbon emissions include the motherboard, which accounts for approximately 17%, memory, which accounts for 9%, power supply, which accounts for 4%, and other cooling fans in the chassis, which account for approximately 6%.
If we compare SSDs with traditional hard drives, over the 5-10 years from manufacturing to disposal, traditional hard drives use more electricity than SSDs during use, but they produce lower carbon emissions during the production process.
However, considering that SSDs require relatively low power to operate and have higher execution efficiency than traditional hard drives, computing needs can be completed in a shorter time. Therefore, researchers also point out that if the problem of SSD service life can be improved, the carbon emissions problem of traditional hard drives can be greatly improved, and the carbon emissions generated during SSD production can also be reduced.
However, considering the current cost per unit of storage capacity, traditional hard drives are still the best choice for storing large amounts of data. Currently, SSDs are mostly used for computing acceleration and other needs. Companies with large amounts of data, such as Meta and Google, still mostly choose to store cold data on traditional hard drives.
