Do SSDs have a lower environmental impact compared to HDDs?

Question

In this question on Super User they say that Solid-State Drives (SSDs) use much less power than traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). I read some internet posts and research articles that backup this claim, although some people say the difference is less than you expect.

My question is: does this mean that overall SSDs have a lower environmental impact over their entire lifespan (so including manufacturing and disposal)? Have there been any scientific studies on this?

With environmental impact I mean the aspects that are generally part of a life-cycle analysis so energy use, water use, GHG emissions, use of rare earth metal and toxicity. Preferably all aspects relevant for disk drives, but if there's only data on a single aspect like carbon footprint I'm interested as well.

Answer 1

The environmental impact potentials were evaluated based on the metal contents and masses of the drives and environmental impact characterization factors used in life cycle impact assessments.

The SSD had 86% to 94% lower resource depletion potentials than the HDD, due primarily to the lower contents of Au, Cu, Pd, Ru, and Pt, whereas the SSD had 33% higher potential for only In.

The SSD also had 87% to 94% lower toxicity potentials due primarily to the lower contents of Ni, Pb, Cu, and Cr. Thus, this study showed that the technology transformation is environmentally desirable to conserve resources and to protect human and ecological health.

Environmental effects of the technology transformation from hard-disk to solid-state drives from resource depletion and toxicity management perspectives, 24 January 2019 – https://doi.org/10.1002/ieam.4127

Answer 2

SSDs store the data in semiconductors. HDDs store the data in rotating rust platters.

In a large scale, if you only need to access the data rarely, HDD has a competitive edge, especially if the access is so rare you can spin down and up the disks as needed (so that the constantly spinning disk doesn't consume energy). The reason is that semiconductor production is a relatively dirty and you need lots of semiconductor chips to store any meaningful amounts of data. So for backup purposes HDDs win.

However, if the data storage needs are small, and/or if the access to the data is frequent, SSDs will probably win. The reason being that for storing only small amounts of data (such as in a single phone) needs only one small semiconductor chip, and frequent access to a data with HDDs would require a massive RAID 1 mirror of the data so that all accesses can be satisfied at a great rate. So you would need to duplicate the data perhaps ten perhaps hundred times with HDDs if access rates are great, but only once if you are using SSDs that are many orders of magnitude faster than HDDs.

Answer 3

Three factors that are not typically considered in these situations:

1. The amount of computer usage time saved using an SSD over an HDD.
2. The amount of industrial equipment built specifically for a single product, as well as the proportion of equipment that can be used for multiple processes.
3. Where and how is the product being recycled/disposed?

All of these are very difficult to determine carbon footprint values for and can vary wildly between manufacturers. Unfortunately, it would be very unlikely to get a manufacturer to agree to an outside comprehensive study of their processes to understand their environmental impact to extrapolate for a consumer scale.