Solid State Storage

[AndyMulhearn]

Back end of last year I bought my wife a new laptop - a 2012 model !3" MacBook pro - with DVD and a 512GB disk. I expected disk performance to be slow but when I helped her with something last weekend I was horrified at how slow it was. For those that use Macs, spinning beachballs of doom were the norm when she loaded apps for example.

So this Saturday it went into a local computer shop and I had the HDD replaced with a solid state drive (SSD) and the difference is like night and day. As an SSD user - I have an MBA - it's the norm to see apps load like this, so much so that I'd forgotten how slow are hard disk based machines. It was that much better that her first comment was "Wow" when she started PSE.

So if you can spare the cash and have a computer based on a spinning disk, an upgrade to an SSD is really a new lease of life.

[Dave_S]

Re: Solid State Storage

My main PC, an i7 based machine with 12Gb of DDR3 RAM, began to slow down, especially the 'boot up', as more and more data was stored on the HDD.

Frustrated by this, I moved the large (2Tb) 'C' drive into the second 'bay', and installed a 500Gb SSD to become the new 'C' drive.

As you say Andy, the difference in the speed of accessing data, and 'boot up', is like 'night and day'.

The OS, programs, and current data are stored on the SSD, and all else on the HDD.

I still back up to external HDDs, but using the PC is no longer frustrating.

Dave

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: Solid State Storage

My son just bought himself a gaming rig and did the same - data on a pair of mirrored 1TB disks, OS and programs on am SSD. It seems SSD is becoming the way to go...

[2Beers]

Re: Solid State Storage

I have been using an SSD for around 2-3 years with no problems and I also have around 6TB of HDD space and I do backups regularly.

The other thing I did when I installed the SSD was to move the user folders like documents etc to the HDD drive but I guess as the price of SSD's have dropped that there is no need to do this I only have a 128GB SSD as they were costly when I first bought it but my pc still boots up ready to use in around 20 secs

[Iron Man]

Re: Solid State Storage

The other thing I did when I installed the SSD was to move the user folders like documents etc to the HDD drive

Still a wise thing to do, SSD drives have a finite, life wrt writing to them - typically about 74TB written (equates to about 40GB per day for 5 years). If you are regularly downloading large files form the internet, it can quickly eat into it.

[Parsen66]

Re: Solid State Storage

Very interesting. Does anyone know if my late 2014 i5 could be updated to SSD? Is this something I can do myself or not?

[2Beers]

Re: Solid State Storage

Is this a PC or Mac.

if it has an HDD then as long as you have a means of installing the OS on it then I dont see why not

[Dave_S]

Re: Solid State Storage

Not a problem Alan, the SSD just replaces the hard-drive (HDD). The Power and Data connections are the same as used on the HDD.

So its pretty much 'plug & play'

The SSD is a much smaller format than the HDD, and you would need a carrier/adapter, on which you would mount the SSD, and that carrier/adapter will fit as per the HDD in the drive bay.

I moved my C drive (HDD) to the spare drive bay, and used Acronis True Image 2015 (my back-up software) to copy the necessary files from the HDD to the SSD (now the C drive).

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=SSD

http://www.ebuyer.com/483483-extra-value-2-5-hdd-ssd-bracket-bracket250eby

Dave

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: Solid State Storage

Very interesting. Does anyone know if my late 2014 i5 could be updated to SSD? Is this something I can do myself or not?

For a desktop it's generally trivial as long as you can reinstall the OS on it. With a mac that's also pretty easy. Windows you need installation media and a licence key. The second one you should be able to get from the PC, the former may not be so easy. Unless it's branded and comes with an option to build a set of recovery disks...

[Dave_S]

Re: Solid State Storage

I think most branded PC's come with the option to create a set of Recovery Discs, although some folk foolishly don't bother to create them.

When they get a problem, they are 'stuffed'.

Dave

[Parsen66]

Re: Solid State Storage

Is this a PC or Mac.

if it has an HDD then as long as you have a means of installing the OS on it then I dont see why not

Not a problem Alan, the SSD just replaces the hard-drive (HDD). The Power and Data connections are the same as used on the HDD.

So its pretty much 'plug & play'

The SSD is a much smaller format than the HDD, and you would need a carrier/adapter, on which you would mount the SSD, and that carrier/adapter will fit as per the HDD in the drive bay.

I moved my C drive (HDD) to the spare drive bay, and used Acronis True Image 2015 (my back-up software) to copy the necessary files from the HDD to the SSD (now the C drive).

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=SSD

http://www.ebuyer.com/483483-extra-value-2-5-hdd-ssd-bracket-bracket250eby

Dave

Mine is a Mac and of course all in built into the monitor. I've pulled apart many PC's but never a Mac

[Dave_S]

Re: Solid State Storage

Ah, sorry Alan, I hadn't realised that you were using a Mac.

Dave