Hello to my curious crowd,
Do you have an older PC that is 5, 6 or even 7 years old? Is it slow and outdated? Thinking of replacing it? Hold on just a sec. Hear me out.
The absolute best upgrade for any computer is upgrading your storage from a hard disk drive to a solid state drive, or “SSD”.
First off, whats a hard disk drive?
All computers come with some kind of data storage technology, and most are equipped with a hard drive. This is a box inside your PC that has a spinning disk – resembling a CD or DVD that writes your data to itself, essentially storing it. These drives are an old technology but have become quite fast in recent years – unfortunately still the slowest part of your computer. Don’t get me wrong, for most purposes a standard hard drive is all you need for your computer. Hard drives come in various disk speeds, 5400rpm, 7200rpm, 10,000rpm and even faster! Sure, this increases its effective speed and is quite noticeable but nowhere near the speed of an SSD.
What’s a solid state drive?
Solid state drives have become a new technology introduced to the computer world recently as a quicker way to read and write your data and store it on your computer. There are many pros and a few cons when considering an SSD.
Pros:
- FAST! Most SSD are more than double the speed of a standard hard drive.
- No moving parts! There are zero mechanical.
- Low heat! No spinning disk, no heat generation (granted, some heat is produced from the data chips within the drive, very little)
- Tiny! Though most SSD are the size of a typical laptop hard drive, you can get them even smaller, to about the size of your pinky finger!
- Less power consumption! Again, no spinning parts equals less power needed to operate.
- Can be used in a PC or Laptop! The flexibility is endless!
Cons:
- Price – The amount of storage you get for the price you pay is a lot less. 1024GB Hard Disk Drive could be $79.00 whereas a 120GB SSD would be around the same price. Though, pricing has come down quite a bit since SSD’s have become a go-to for most mid to high-end computer systems. More companies are making them and are more available.
When I explain the workings of a HDD vs an SSD to my customers I like to use a simple analogy.
If you were to take a stack of papers, lets say 10 papers, and you’re looking for 1 specific paper with a certain bit of data on it you would likely start at the top and work your way through the stack until you find it. This is sort of how a HDD works. Bit of a slower process.
If you were to take a stack of papers, lets say 10 papers, and you’re looking for 1 specific paper, you would simply lay them all out in front of you and look at all of them at once. Imagine that you find it immediately without going through the papers one by one. This is how an SSD works. Finds the paper way, way faster.
When you install an SSD to your old PC you are performing a massive upgrade and your PC will load so fast, start programs fast, shutdown quickly when you want it too and generally access all your files without a slow down. The only thing you’d have to worry about is to not keep too much data on the SSD as most of the time they’re smaller in storage size.
If you have any questions please ask me on my FACEBOOK page!