Solid State Drives

[richardf77]

Thinking of upgrading to one of these. I was wondering who here uses one, either in a PC that came with one or upgraded to one.

If you upgraded, how did you go about it? Any problems or did it go smoothly? What make of SSD did you go for?

Any information would be very useful.  Thanks.

[Geek-9pm]

First, I am not qualified. But I am curious.
What made you decide to give SSD a try now?
What are you wanting to improve?

[camerongray]

I use SSDs in literally all the PCs I use regularly, we've also moved all our PCs to SSDs at work as well.  Off the top of my head I must own at least 8 different SSDs!  The difference they make is massive, both in terms of general responsiveness along with durability which is a particular benefit in things like laptops.  I've found that often, for general office/home use, an SSD will bring a more noticeable overall speed up to a PC than upgrading the CPU would for around the same price.

Whenever I've installed SSDs I've generally just done a clean OS install as I take it as an opportunity to start fresh.  However, there is plenty of free cloning software that will let you copy your hard drive to your SSD so that you don't need to reinstall.

As far as which make, I have a pretty large mix of different brands from over the years however nowadays I tend to stick with either Crucial or Samsung as they are decent, reliable drives that are competitively priced.

[patio]

Right now other than RAM it's the most bang for your buck as far a s upgrades go for a PC...They have come a long way in a condensed period of time and don't suffer from all the maladies people discussed when the were new to the Market...

As far as the transition i've done a ton of client's PC's for them and if you use a good cloning app the swap of drive to drive is seamless.

As far as branding right now the SanDisk line is priced very well and has also shown great results as far as performance and reliability...

Good Luck on your upgrade...and Welcome to CH.

[patio]

Cameron...you type faster than me....

[Jahness]

I'm not an expert but I can tell you my experience with my upgrade to SSD. It started with a purchase of a new Motherboard, CPU, & Memory. My main drive wasn't having any issues at all I just wanted to take advantage of the faster components. My mistake was not going with the Samsung EVO that I read so many good things about. I didn't want to clone my new SSD cause I wanted a clean install. The one I purchased is a Sandisk Z400s 256GB and although it performs alot faster then my old HDD, I'll probably end up putting it in my Laptop and getting the Samsung eventually. One thing I did find out is that going into setup and changing the drive connection to AHCI instead of IDE/Sata helped with speed. The thing is you need to change this before you install Windows. I also changed my default download directory to my second HDD to avoid writing so much to the SSD. I read somewhere that that's not too good for SSD's. Hope this helps.

John

[richardf77]

Thanks for replies.

Been thinking about upgrading for a while, after reading how much faster they are. My main PC (Packard Bell iMedia desktop 5/6 years old) has had a new lease of life recently by upgrading to 10 but do feel the HDD is now a weak link. I would like to use a relatively small, inexpensive but still reliable SSD to run windows and some software and continue to use my old HDD as storage.

Been looking at makes of SSD, Samsung and Crucial look a bit expensive (at least in the UK where i am) compared to other brands, however if they are better then it might be worth paying a bit more. Looking at 120GB size as the best value for ,my needs.

[Gilgamesh21]

Hey man,

I have just recently updated to SSD from SSHD for my lenovo y50 70( actually I had asked a question here in the forum about cloning). I have been using it for a few days and I could say the difference is quite noticable. Video games load faster( battlefield 4 used to take some time to load in multiplayer on the old drive), photoshop loading pretty fast, folders open quicker...you could feel the difference indeed. I bought an OCZ Trion 150 480gb due to budget but I do not regregret it so far. It is a tangible upgrade.

[Salmon Trout]

I bought a 120 GB Samsung Evo 840 from Currys Digital just over 2 years ago, it was £69.99 and it was money well spent. I put it in the Shuttle PC I had at the time and when I got a new PC a year ago I moved the SSD over to that. It is still going strong. You can get a 120 GB Evo 850 for less than that now, and a 250 GB for not much more. It's a no-brainer.

[Salmon Trout]

I'm not an expert but I can tell you my experience with my upgrade to SSD. It started with a purchase of a new Motherboard, CPU, & Memory. My main drive wasn't having any issues at all I just wanted to take advantage of the faster components. My mistake was not going with the Samsung EVO that I read so many good things about. I didn't want to clone my new SSD cause I wanted a clean install. The one I purchased is a Sandisk Z400s 256GB and although it performs alot faster then my old HDD, I'll probably end up putting it in my Laptop and getting the Samsung eventually. One thing I did find out is that going into setup and changing the drive connection to AHCI instead of IDE/Sata helped with speed. The thing is you need to change this before you install Windows. I also changed my default download directory to my second HDD to avoid writing so much to the SSD. I read somewhere that that's not too good for SSD's. Hope this helps.

John

While it is true that flash memory has a finite number of writes that it can take, modern SSDs can be treated just like an ordinary hard drive in most cases. The drive maker states the maximum amount of data each model can have written/rewritten. 850 Evo's 120GB and 250GB capacities have an endurance rating of 75TB. This means you can write 40GB per day to the drive every day, and it will last for at least 5 years. The 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities' endurance is doubled (150TB) and will take even longer to run out. My Evo 840 has a limit of 72 TB. As of today, with 2 years of use as a Windows 7 and 10 system drive, with the swap file and temp folder on the SSD, it has had 5.87 TB written. The drives come with software to monitor usage and disk health. If I use it at this rate, it will last for 24 years, as long as nothing else goes wrong (the kinds of thing that could happen to all drives, solid or not, such as electronics failure). In even five years time, let alone 24, I won't care if it starts to fail, because I make regular backups, and by that time SSDs will be bigger fatser and cheaper.

 

[Jahness]

Thanks for the info Salmon, I guess I shouldn't worry too much about it then. I still like having my default download folder on my second drive. I really should have gone SSD years ago but I really don't like buying new technology, I wait until the price is more affordable for me.

John

[Geek-9pm]

Of interest:
Super-fast 10TB Intel SSDs could be on the horizon thanks to new Micron chips

Intel sells consumer SSDs with a maximum capacity of 4TB, and Micron’s 3D NAND chips will could up to triple that capacity. Some of Intel’s enterprise SSD products are old and due for an upgrade.
Intel did not comment on when it would release new SSDs. Micron, which sells SSDs, will release new drives in the spring and summer seasons.

[Salmon Trout]

I really should have gone SSD years ago but I really don't like buying new technology, I wait until the price is more affordable for me.

If you buy an SSD now, no way would you be an "early adopter". They are mainstream and affordable.

[Jahness]

If you buy an SSD now, no way would you be an "early adopter". They are mainstream and affordable.

I pretty much follow that rule of thumb with everything, I wait until the price comes down to more of a reasonable price, one that I can afford anyway.

[patio]

They are at that point now...almost matchin traditional HDD's on cost per MG.