1 TB hard drive vs 256GB SSD storage

[Vacay Wheels]

Originally Posted by Freqz

SSD, without a doubt. It's so much faster especially on start up. If storage is an issue buy an external hard drive to store pictures and movies and whatnot. My computers with SSDs (my work laptop and the house computer at the S&B) wake up almost as fast as an iPad.

Totally agree with this. These days, always spring for the SSD, even if it's a little more. The appreciable impact on computer performance is significant.

Originally Posted by l1v3fr33ord1

As the saying goes, "You can never have too fast a processor or too much RAM."

This is generally true. You just have to be careful when applying this principle. Higher-end processors tend to come with higher-end everything else--graphics, etc--that may not be worth it for how you use the machine.

[docj]

I'm not sure why the choice has to be just a 256GB SSD vs a 1TB HDD. My one-year old Dell has both, an SSD as the boot drive and a 1TB HDD as the primary data storage. Some day I might convert the 1TB drive to a SSD but that wouldn't buy me that much of a performance improvement.

The new ASUS laptop which I have on order for my spouse comes with a 1TB HDD AND a space for an SSD using the M.2 format. This is the same approach used in my Dell, the only difference is that the SSD space isn't yet filled in the new computer.

For our new machine there are really two distinct upgrade options. I could add an M.2 SSD ($100) and then migrate the operating system to the new drive and make it the boot drive. There are numerous programs that will do the migration, Partition Magic being one of them.

Or, I could simply clone the 1TB HDD to a 1TB SSD and substitute it. Cloning a drive is really rather simple, Crucial sells a "kit" that comes with the necessary SATA-USB cable. You put the new SSD in place and boot off of a USB using a program supplied by Crucial. The old HDD is connected via the USB-SATA cable and the supplied software clones the old drive onto the new one. The cost of a 1TB SSD on Amazon is currently ~$280.

So the choice is which one I prefer to do; the chances are that I'll buy the M.2 and install it just because it's a bit cheaper. If you set your Windows libraries to use the HDD then the only use of the SSD will pretty much be for the operating system and new programs.