SSD / Hard Drive - CF-54

Panasonic Toughbook CF-54 SSD / Hard Drive Upgrades

Here is a list of the standard hard drives for the Panasonic Toughbook CF-54:

Panasonic Toughbook CF-54(A) mk1 - 500GB 5400rpm HDD (lite) / 500GB 7200rpm HDD (other models)

Panasonic Toughbook CF-54(D) mk2 - 500GB 5400rpm HDD (lite) / 500GB 7200rpm HDD (other models)

Panasonic Toughbook CF-54(G) mk3 - 500GB 5400rpm HDD (lite) / 256GB SSD (other models)

Your Panasonic Toughbook CF-54 can be upgraded with either a hard disk drive or solid state drive of virtually any capacity. Hard drives have improved over the years and your Panasonic Toughbook CF-54 has many optional upgrades available for users who are primarily focused on storage capacity, speed, or both.

A hard drive is the hardware device that permanently stores and retrieves all of your digital content. Your hard drive stores your operating system, software programs, and personal files. Let’s take a look at the two different types of hard drives that are available for your Panasonic Toughbook CF-54:

HARD DISK DRIVE (HDD)

A conventional hard drive, also referred to as a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), is an electro magnetic storage device that uses magnetic storage to store and retrieve data using one or more rapidly rotating disks (sometimes referred to as platters) coated with magnetic material. An HDD uses a mechanical arm with a read/write head that floats above the platters to magnetically read and store data on the disk or disks. This is the type of hard drive many of us have known and used for years. Not much has changed except they’ve gotten smaller and hold far more data than they did years ago.

SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD)

A solid state drive (SSD) is a solid state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies (flash memory) to store data persistently. SSDs have no moving parts and use an SSD controller for reading, writing and transferring data. Most SSDs use NAND flash technology which does not require power in order to retain data similar to USB thumb drives or SD memory cards.

TRANSFER SPEEDS

The transfer speeds of a hard drive are determined by several factors. For SSDs, transfer speed is determined by the read/write speed and what type of computer bus interface the hard drive has. The speed of an HDD is determined by the same two factors but also can be influenced by the rotational speed of the disks. in Panasonic Toughbooks, rotation speeds are typically either 4200 RPMs, 5400 RPMs or 7200 RPMs. Generally the faster the rotation speed, the faster the hard drive.

WHAT IS SATA?

Prior to the introduction of the SATA computer bus interface, most hard drives used an IDE (PATA) computer bus interface. IDE drives are an older technology and are virtually non-existent and haven’t been used in Panasonic Toughbooks in well over ten years. They were connected to your computer or laptop by a wide ribbon cable that usually had forty pins at the connector in laptops.

SATA drives came onto the scene in the year 2000 and because of their ability to move data faster, they quickly became the hard drive of choice by virtually all manufacturers. Transfer speeds are determined by what generation controller your laptop came with. SATA I has a transfer speed of up to 150MBs per second, SATA II has transfer speeds of up to 300MBs per second, and the latest generation SATA III has transfer speeds of up to 600MBs per second. All Panasonic Toughbook CF-54’s utilize SATA III controllers.

There are also different SATA interfaces. Along with the familiar seven pin connector, there are also M.2, PCIe, eSATA, mSATA, and others. The Panasonic Toughbook CF-54 has both the standard seven pin interface and a M.2 (NGFF) 2280 connector.

READ/WRITE SPEEDS

So if SSDs and HDDs use the same SATA computer bus controllers, how come SSDs are so much faster? The answer is in the read and write speeds. Whereas a typical SATA HDD has read/write speeds of 12MBs per second at the low end and pretty much top out at 120MBs per second max, a typical consumer SSD has read and write speeds of over 500MBs per second, nearly four times faster! And SSD speeds are increasing as technology improves.

HDD VS SSD

The main difference between an HDD and an SSD is the cost of mass storage versus speed. Although the cost of SSDs has fallen over the years, smaller capacity SSDs generally run about twice the cost as an HDD, while on higher capacity drives of say 1, 2 or 4 terabytes, the cost can be substantially higher. If you work with large files and super fast performance is not your utmost concern then it would probably benefit you to upgrade to a 1TB or larger HDD. But if you feel the need for speed, upgrading to a super-fast SSD may very well be worth the investment.

Another great feature that the Toughbook CF-54 has is an onboard socket for a flash memory drive using the M.2 format. This drive can be easily installed on your Toughbook CF-54 and your operating system can be cloned over to the new drive for super fast start-ups and performance. Use your existing hard drive as a data drive to increase your storage. Call one of our technical associates to learn more.

Check here to see what hard drive options are available for the Toughbook CF-54.

You use your Panasonic Toughbook every day so why wouldn’t you want a laptop that’s running at its peak performance? Optimize the performance of your laptop by upgrading the RAM/memory to its maximum capacity. Learn more about the advantages of taking your Toughbook to the next level here.

And don’t forget to make your Toughbook mobile friendly with 4G/LTE broadband. Use your Toughbook for what it was made to do! Learn more.