SSD for Quick Boot-up

[artbuc]

Hi! It’s me again. Seems like every year or so I come here seeking advice on a new desktop but never pull the trigger...still using my trusty old HP a1600 Media Edition. Well, this time I might actually do it and spring for a new desktop. I like the idea of a dual drive using the SSD to boot up and traditional HD for storage. My PC needs are minimal but I want a fast reliable machine, probably a Dell Inspiron with an i5 processor.

Considering I boot-up just 4-5 times per week, is the SSD worth an extra $150 or so? Thanks.

[camerongray]

I would definitely say so, it's not just the boot up time, having an SSD will also majorly improve the time it takes to load up applications and will generally make the machine feel much "snappier" - nowadays I wouldn't have any sort of machine without an SSD.

[artbuc]

I would definitely say so, it's not just the boot up time, having an SSD will also majorly improve the time it takes to load up applications and will generally make the machine feel much "snappier" - nowadays I wouldn't have any sort of machine without an SSD.

SSD instead of HDD or in addition to HDD?

[camerongray]

In my machines I only have SSDs but that's just because I don't really need that much storage on my local machines (the most I have is a 512gb SSD in my laptop) - All my large files are stored on a NAS which uses hard drives.  If you need a large amount of storage for things like video and photo then there's no harm in having a hard drive as well but ideally you'd want an SSD large enough hold your OS and software then only use the hard drive for file storage.

[artbuc]

In my machines I only have SSDs but that's just because I don't really need that much storage on my local machines (the most I have is a 512gb SSD in my laptop) - All my large files are stored on a NAS which uses hard drives.  If you need a large amount of storage for things like video and photo then there's no harm in having a hard drive as well but ideally you'd want an SSD large enough hold your OS and software then only use the hard drive for file storage.

I use only 65 gb of my current 250 gb HDD so a 512 SSD would take care of me. I can always add a HHD later if necessary. If I get a machine with both, how do I make sure the OS and apps are on the SSD and only selected files are on the HDD? Do I use a program like  Easeus?

I understand that you should plan on using only 50% of your SSD capacity. Is that too conservative?

[Geek-9pm]

If you know when you will need your PC, just program it to start up five min ahead of the time you need.
Look at this:
https://www.wikihow.com/Automatically-Turn-On-a-Computer-at-a-Specified-Time
The example is for Windows 7, but you can do it also in Windows 10.

[camerongray]

I wouldn't worry too much about using over 50% of the SSD, you obviously don't want to ram it totally full but that "advice" tends to stem from the early days of SSDs where people seemed to be terrified of this new technology and came up with all sorts of weird and wonderful advice on how to use them.  Nowadays I tend to treat SSDs just like I would a hard drive without issue.  I would take a 250gb SSD as a minimum nowadays on a PC used for regular office tasks as it's so cheap that going for something smaller usually isn't worth it.

If you have both, your hard drive will show up as its own drive letter, your SSD would be the C: drive and then your hard drive would be something else like the D: drive.  Exactly the same as if you connected a USB stick or an external hard drive.  You would then just decide where to put each file and copy files between them much like how you would copy between folders.

[Lisa_maree]

If you are considering the Dell Inspiron  laptop then differently get a 256 GB M2 SSD drive included in the purchase. This will leave the sata free to add say a 1 tb standard drive.
It is a good idea to keep about 20gb free as work space for the SSD drive.
Also just like a mechanical drive you need to backup the drive. Unlike old drives which gave some warning in most cases they were failing. SSD's seem to have a quick time between working and not and when they do fail it is more difficult to recover.
 

[2x3i5x]

just wondering though, what about those SSHD hybrid drives? They say that might be a good buy for the reasonable $ if you want a mix of faster performance and larger disk space. ?

[patio]

Stay away from the hybrids