Solid State Drives (SSDs)

[Ricotez]

Alright, so I got some money to spend, and it is seriously pissing me off how much Lenovo cheaped out on the hard drive in my laptop. It is so painfully slow and bottlenecks the entire system whenever something has to be loaded into the RAM. Therefore I am considering to plug a SSD into it. I've already checked behind the maintenance cover, and my laptop has an empty SSD slot (I think the connector is called mSATA), so I can plug one right in.

But what I can't figure out is what would be best to install on it. Should I move my OS there? In general my laptop boots fast, the slowdowns start once I log in and it loads my desktop. Or should I move Steam and all my games onto it instead?

I'm also kinda lost in the forest of options. What's the best price/quality ratio in terms of SSD manufacturers?

[Saegrimr]

SSDs should be large enough these days to use as your typical everything-drive.

I'd still have an external HDD for the "shit you don't use as often" storage.

[Remie Richards]

When 3D Xpoint memory comes out (estimated for 2 ish years time) SSD prices will plummet (3D Xpoint can be used as RAM and General memory and is 1000x faster than NAND/flash memory, kind of a killer creation by Intel there), so as Saeg said you can just use a decent sized SSD for -everything-

Also, might help people here to give you better answers if you expand upon "got some money to spend"

[Ricotez]

I'm looking around the €100 range, so that puts me roughly in the 250GB category of SSDs. The Samsung 850 looks like a good series, I can get the 256GB version for €115.

Though I might go up a bit if I can find a good 500GB class SSD with a decent price tag.

So I guess my next question would be: is it really worth it? Do you really notice the speedup?

[Timbrewolf]

I'd still have an external HDD for the "shit you don't use as often" storage.

You mean porn.

He means porn.

[Wyzack]

Why do people download porn? This is the age of streaming people

[Incomptinence]

Used an x99 board when making my comp this year and that basically meant waiting for an overpriced bottom end pcie ssd to get mailed because australia. About 120 gb storage in practice so I don't use it for everything but hey it boots fast.

Should I ever fill my wallet and lose my mind though totally retarded shit is compatible with it.

[Ricotez]

I was wondering why a SSD - even one with 1.2TB - would be more expensive than a new desktop but then I saw the read/write speed

jesus christ we have liftoff

[Malkevin]

I'd still have an external HDD for the "shit you don't use as often" storage.

You mean porn.

He means porn.

He said things he doesn't use often.

[AnonymousNow]

The constant recommendation - which I finally caved to - was the Samsung 850 Evo. It handles well for me, and is frequently discounted.

[Timbrewolf]

I'd still have an external HDD for the "shit you don't use as often" storage.

You mean porn.

He means porn.

He said things he doesn't use often.

[oranges]

for what it's worth I have a samsung 850 evo and it's been very solid as my everything drive.

SSD's make such a huge difference to boot time that I would recommend them as the OS drive if you shutdown your machine over night. Putting a few commonly played games on them will also improve loading times.

edit:Boot time in this case covers both startup and then login + start applications that commonly run (Skype, mumble, firefox etc) so I think it would be a good upgrade for your purposes.

[Ricotez]

I boiled the choice down between two different versions of the Samsung 850 EVO: the one with 250gb and the one with 500gb.

The main problem is exactly how long the drive would last with both sizes. 250gb is probably enough for everything that I want the speed boost on, all my system files together take up 50gb which leaves me with 200gb for applications.

However, I read that you never should load your SSD up completely, because rewriting to one sector over and over rapidly deteriorates the lifespan of the drive. So in that case taking the 500gb which has a lot more space would be smarter.

The other problem is that the 500gb costs almost twice as much as the 250gb. If I have to replace the SSD in a few years anyway, I'd rather save half of that money to replace the 250gb then.

So really heavily leaning to the 250gb. Is there any reason why I should take the 500gb instead? And remember that I have an empty mSATA slot, the SSD will not replace my HDD.

[Ricotez]

In the end I went with the Samsung 850 EVO 250gb. I replaced my dvd player with a HDD caddy, plugged my old hard disk into that one, then plugged the Samsung into the SATA slot that held my old hard disk before.

It then took me 3 days to install Windows 10 to it. Not because of problems with the drive, but because the flash drive I was using for the Windows installer was corrupt.

Anyway all is up and running now, and my computer pchoooooooooms past boot. I might move one or two games to the SSD too but for now it's all Windows.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I love SSDs. But I have to be choosy about which games I download, so D: