Which of the following factors would cause a technician to select a hard drive over an SSD as a primary storage medium?

SSDs are faster than HDDs in both sequential and random I/O, so speed would lead a technician to select an SSD, not an HDD.

SSDs consume less power than HDDs because they contain no spinning platters or actuator arms, so lower power consumption favors SSDs over HDDs.

SSDs are available in smaller and more varied form factors such as M.2 and U.2, providing more flexibility than the standard 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch HDD form factors.

HDDs offer a substantially lower cost per gigabyte than SSDs, making them the preferred choice for budget-constrained deployments or when large raw capacity is needed at minimum expense. SSDs outperform HDDs in every other practical category including speed, power efficiency, physical shock resistance, and form factor flexibility, leaving cost as the primary remaining justification for choosing a traditional spinning hard drive.