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Looking for more speed out of your laptop or desktop computer? Solid State Drives or SSD drives are great way to boost the speed of your computer. If you have a fast CPU and maxed out your RAM, most likely the cause of a slow computer is a lagging hard drive.
Your hard drive might be the component dragging down performance. Unlike traditional hard drives with spinning disks, a SSD drives has no moving parts and use a series flash memory chips to store data.
As a result they are lightening fast and can decrease boot up times from minutes to seconds. Also since they have no moving parts they are less prone to shock problems.
The downside of SSD drives is the expense, the lower storage capability and life expectancy (around 5 years depending on how much reading and writing you do on the disk).
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But if you want to speed up your computer, especially if you use programs like Adobe Photoshop then for around $188 you can get a beefy, speedy SSD drive and experience faster work environment.
I suggest a bigger drive than you think you need as SSD drives work best with about 25 percent empty space and Windows, YouTube and other applications seem to always like to hide a bunch of temporary files on the C: drive.
I started out with a 120G SSD drive and then moved to a 240G and then installed a 500G SSD a year later. Between me and my teenager, the 240G SSD drive just got bloated and even after trying to eliminate every temporary file, every download, every desktop image, the drive was still in the red zone.
I suggest just biting the bullet and spending the money on a 500G drive and try to use it only for the operating system and perhaps the one program you use a lot. Give it plenty of room to breath. Get yourself a second one for your programs or a big traditional drive as your second or third drive.
Migrating to a SSD drive is super easy and I recommend the
Samsung SSD 850 EVO because it comes with great software to guide you through the process.
The tricky thing about migrating your operating system drive is getting all of the hidden system files. To do this you need to clone the drive using cloning software. The Samsung includes an easy to use cloning software, other drives don’t come with software and you have to find a free program on line. Just one more step.
Also with the Samsung you can get an optional USB connector to clone the drive via USB. Not really necessary.
Basically the procedure is hooking up the new drive to an open bay in your computer. The boot up and run the cloning software. This might take an hour more or less. Then shut down the computer and switch the drive with the old one.
If it boots up you are all set. You can then install the old drive in the second bay and reformat it, or put it in a safe place as a backup drive.
Since the SSD drives are laptop sized, you may wish to purchase a drive bay converter for your desktop. They are very inexpensive and easy to mount.