Standard hard drive disks (HDD) are much more common, at least up until recently. These type of drives use magnetic disks to record data and spin continuously in your computer; constantly reading, storing and recalling at different speeds. These drives are also fixed with a “head” that is able to move along the disk and magnetically recall the data. If you are able to picture a record player, the internal system of a HDD is very similar. In this example, the disk would be the record and the head would be the record needle. While these drives have been able to shrink in size and decrease in price over time they are still slower and more complicated than their counterpart. 

Solid state drives (SSD) are starting to become increasingly popular and are much faster compared to other hard drives. Able to write at over 100 times the speed of a common HDD, a SSD uses flash memory and has absolutely no moving parts. This not only allows data to be saved and recalled much quicker, but it is also able to do this process noiselessly and with almost no power consumption. In these drives, all data is saved in binary coding (1’s and 0’s) which simplifies the entire process of storage. While these drives are much simpler and lighter than HDDs , they are also much more expensive. 

As far as price is concerned, HDDs are much cheaper and allow you to get much more storage space at a much lower price. However, the amount of moving parts in a HDD means that they are more susceptible to wear and tear over time. While a SSD is limited to a certain number of write cycles, which means it can only be written to a certain amount of times, they are still much more secure and the technology is sure to advance in the future. If you are interested in only standard, light use for you computer I would recommend going with the cheaper HDD option. However, if speed, security, simplicity and weight are necessary factors, picking a computer with a SSD should be considered a necessity.