Should I get a SSD?

I don't know if my hard drive (a 2 year old WD Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT) has been getting slower the past few months, or if I'm just becoming more impatient, but I'm really getting tired of waiting for my computer to startup (or resume from hibernating, which I do a lot). It only takes about 22 seconds for W7 to shutdown, but starting up takes a long time! I timed my last startup:

1:12 - login screen appears
2:15 - desktop shows up (after logging in quickly)
4:00 - startup programs (digsby and a few other small ones) finally load and the computer is responsive

I want to buy a new hard drive, and my question is: should I buy a regular hard drive, or a SSD? I don't really play video games, so space isn't too much of an issue for me. A 64GB drive might be enough, but I would likely go for something with slightly more capacity, should I decide to get one. Also, I have two HDD bays in my laptop, so I can always store stuff that doesn't need to load quickly on a secondary HDD.

So, in your opinion, would a SSD benefit me? Any recommendations for one under $150?

Thanks

 

Under $150? No, those products are not worthy of your cash in my opinion.

I would recommend an XT 750GB Hybrid drive instead. It will still cost more than your budget allows (keep saving) but it will give you SSD like performance and 4x (or more) greater capacity without any of the downsides of buying an inexpensive SSD can potentially throw at you.

Make no mistake, an SSD will still be faster, but at a cost of at least $400 for the 256GB M4 that I would recommend on the 'low end' of the SSD spectrum.

See:
Seagate 750GB Momentus XT 7200.1 SATA 2.5in Hybrid Drive w/ 32MB Cache at Memory Express

Sale now at $199.99. (Good price for this drive).

Good luck.

 

I disagree with tilleroftheearth here. There are some great SSDs you can get for less than $150, provided you don't expect over 160GB of space. The Intel 320 160GB was actually on sale for $155-165 very recently, but the sale has ended. Since you do have two HDD bays, I would recommend a nice 64-80GB SSD in addition to your current mechanical HDD in the secondary bay. Some good ones to look for are the Intel 320 (and possibly 510) SSDs, the Samsung 830 Series SSDs, and maybe the Crucial M4.

 

If you have 2 storage bays, just pick up a nice 64GB SSD and use the HDD as normal storage.

Assuming you can keep your data backed up somewhere, you don't have much to worry about.

My HDD wasn't that slow even off a cold boot though... That seems slow. Maybe bad sectors?

 

If you have a Sata II chipset- Samsung 470, Sata III chipset Samsung 830 Series.,,Benefits-faster boot time, cooler notebook, longer battery life, faster virus scan, faster update install, faster clean install,,,ect. I use a Samsung 470 64Gb,,250Mb/s write,,170Mb/s read,,night and day difference in performance comparing ssd's to HDD's,,mine is one year old,,no problems at all, performance the same.,,470 series firmware updates are thru dos,,830 dos or windows application.


Cheers
3Fees

 

Yeah my friend had a similar experience with his desktop.... So on skype he'd be like I gotta reboot my PC before a BF3 session... so after a while I timed his restart time to be 5 mins xD!!! (from the time the call dropped, and then finally reconnects) So I got tired of waiting!!! I found my old 64GB toshiba SSD (which came with a qosmio... a 11GB recovery partition on.... and a 1.6GB unknown partition)... formated EVERYTHING!!! (no more vista recovery, only one partition of 59.5 available space) sent it to him, told him what to do.... now he restarts under 45 seconds ! He can't thank me enough but the funny thing is it's litterally one of the first SSDs ever (April 2009 or so). He can only install win 7 on it NOTHING ELSE. You HAVE to be carefull with installing programs every time or with where your internet browser or itunes are going to store things...

Once you're carefull though it's a tremendous gain of performance and definately recommands it to my friends!!! HDDs are just too old for today's technology! (not for storage, videos and photos though)

EDIT: forgot to mention... This is what happens with the very first SSDs, today's SSDs are much faster! so is it worth it?! HELL YEAH!!! go for it But beware, it gets addicting!!! I started with that 64GB pretty much 2 and a half year ago... then bought a kingston SSD 128Gb cause it just seemed like I wanted my favorite programs on for minimum loading speeds... Now (since yesterday) I got a crucial m4 256GB cause I just want every single programs to be on the fast lane .

 

Thanks for all of your replies. I guess I should start shopping around for a SSD, as it definitely sounds like it's worth it.

Yeah.. I figured I would put the OS along with my most frequently used programs on the SSD, and then put my videos, pictures, music, and other not-so-frequently-used files on the HDD..

 

Yeah it just make sense. But really first of, your 4 min boot time isn't normal.... not even for a HDD.... you gotta be able to play with CCleaner and defrag (btw don't defrag SSDs as it's not good for its lifespan....) my best advice for you would be to get a 128GB SSD if you just start... Let's face it a 256GB is expensive. But a 64GB is just TOO SMALL... with windows updates... it just gets filled! not fun at all, there is just NOTHING you can do about it. At least with a 128GB you can manage but with a 64, you just stress out until you just can't manage anymore, and it wasn't your fault... but you just couldn't do a thing against how much space it just took eventually...

 

I have to agree that your 4 minute boot time is not normal, a clean enough windows install on a "slow" momentus 7200.4 500GB takes around a minute and by clean enough, i mean 70ish processes running at startup.

You should still get the SSD, so far i find 64GB manageable, but you have to watch it a bit, 128GB will give you some peace of mind.

 

I have a SSD (kingston Hyperx 120 gb) for OS and a HDD (scorpio black 750 gb) in the DVD/CD drive for storage. Best investment I made.

If you d/l alot, make sure you set the default setting to your storage drive (HDD) and not SSD.

 

try doing a fresh install of windows first it may just be that you have a lot of clutter/garbage/broken registry links and whatnot before investing on an ssd for an old laptop.

although definitely an SSD (64gig SATA II) is enough for windows 7 and some apps. apps you don't need to run fast can be installed on a secondary drive alongside storage for your large files (movies, mp3's etc).

 

Investing in SSD if you can afford it is a must upgrade, it will save you a lot of waiting every time you start your laptop or open applications.

I am not sure if your laptop supports SATA III, but for $150 you can find a good deal on 120GB SATA II SSD such as Intel 320 or Samsung 470. You can find a SATA III SSD as well around this price but very unlikely to be Intel or Samsung or Crucial.

 

64GB should be enough for a Windows install with any normal amount of programs installed, I don't see windows updates eating away at space.

With hibernation disabled and pagefile set to 512MB (and set to expand to 2GB if needed) along with a Virtual Machine (for XP mode, and that's some 5GB if not more), I'm sitting at a nice 29GB used out of a 59.5GB total on my Samsung 830.

Of course, that's with my libraries moved over to another drive.

 

Same here, been sitting at ~38 GB on the desktop for a few months now. Of course, updates will eventually eat some space, but it isn't that much imo. n the end, i'm still in favor of a 128GB SSD though.

 

Me too!

No seriously, I also have a 64GB SSD on a DV5 with a 500GB HDD in a converted optical bay caddy. Have 32GB remaining, no pagefile (have 8GB RAM), and the usual suspects of programs (office, itunes, every browser, multimedia apps, business apps., etc.), Keep music, videos, Acronis backups, and archive on 2nd HDD.

Boot time with Win7 is 35-40secs. Have lots of tray apps since the is my multimedia lappy that I hook up to TV and entertainment center.

Definitely get an SSD. You won't regret it.

A word of warning; once you get one, you're going to want it for your other systems. Such a huge boost in system performance.

 

SSDs have ruined me. I cannot stand using a PC at work or at my friends place with a HDD without cursing and longing for my notebook. It is that bad

 

Hmm.. I don't think I've actually timed how fast a cold boot is, I know its not any higher than 20 seconds...

 

Yeah it is, i can barely stand my N50's boot time and it has a 500GB 7200RPM with a relatively clean install.

My G73 boots in 19secs including POST. I didn't time my desktop, the POST on a P8P67 Pro is long when all the controllers are enabled. However, i do know that the windows is starting animation barely has time to form the window icon at the center of the screen before i get to the login screen. I can also finally get a solid 3 hours of battery on power savings on my G73.

 

Really? I've been using my 64GB Kingston SSD for about 1.5 years now with Windows 7 Home Premium kept up to date via Windows Update. I have all my apps on there, but no games -- to me a "computer game" is Solitaire -- including MS Office, Corel Suite, Opera, Thunderbird, VMWare, iTunes, etc. According to Windows Explorer, I have "27.9 GB free of 59.5 GB." If I were to do some tidying up, like running CCleaner and deleting all but the last System Restore point, I probably could gain another GB or so. I only have a token 128MB swap file -- I have 12 GB RAM, and "just in case," I have a second swap file allocated on a partition on a hard drive -- and no hybernation file, though. All my data that I can relocate is on a HDD.

"70ish processes?" I must live in a parallel universe. Right now with Opera, Windows Explorer and Task Manager open (and Avast! and Comodo firewall in the background), I only have 46 processes running (Win7 Home Premium.)

Now, there's someone I can identify with!

For me, a 128 GB SSD would be "nice," because I could include most of my data (except movies/TV shows) on the SSD, but 64 GB is most definitely do-able as long as there's a second drive for data.

PS: The system I'm referring to is my desktop system. At the time when I decided to upgrade the notebook hard drive, the 128 Gb SSDs were far too pricey, so I went with the Seagate Momentus XT as a compromise.