SSD - Get One NOW!

Leechap · 26 Dec 2015

I would like to relate my experience here. I have a HP Envy from 2011. This was a "top of the line" computer back then coming with an i7 cpu that I use for both video editing and rendering and programs such as PhotoShop and other resource intensive applications.

It ran Win7 with no issues and was quite quick and responsive. I am power user type and love to tweak with setting so naturally I was excited when Windows 10 was released and immediately installed it the first day it became available. My system crawled and I was devastated thinking that my wonderful "workhorse" of a system was going to have to be put out to pasture!

I tried everything...every suggestion...and while some improvements were gained in bootup it still was around 3 full minutes from bootup until the system was stable enough to actually press the windows key to get the start menu to actually display and any program to run. Never figured out why however, I decided to try one last thing because most of the problem seemed to point to the hard drive as the bottleneck.

I researched solid state drives and found that SamSung Evo had the best rating based on testing and more important (to me) consumer experience and testimonials. Another MAJOR PLUS was that it cames with a cloning program (at no additional cost) that actually works!

I went from a 750 gig drive to a 500 gig drive so I had to move some data off the drive (big things like music, videos, and photos) to bring it down to around 400 gigs with all the actual programs still installed. One reason I wanted to clone the drive was to avoid having to reinstall endless (and very large) programs!

The cloning took 6 hours which I let run overnight. In the morning the system said that the clone was finished and successful. I was excited...I shutdown the computer...opened it up...removed the "old" drive...installed the new SSD...put the back back on...crossed my fingers and pushed the power on button.

I was amazed at how quickly it booted. It went from 3 full minutes to being usable to 15 seconds! Yes, 15 seconds! It is faster than the day I bought it back in 2011 and I can see getting another 3 years out of it!

The cost for this SSD was $160 and I can honestly say I have never spent better money on anything - ever.

If you are frustrated with slow boot times I totally recommend this tiny investment. It gave me a whole new computer.

CountMike · 26 Dec 2015

I experienced that 3 years or so ago, a revelation !!! Not only BOOT times but responsiveness when opening programs too. A large Excel file or MS publisher open faster than I can remove finger from KB and together with it's corresponding program. That used to make annoying noises from HDD for 10 seconds, This summer I got another SSD, 240GB for main system and using older 120GB for experimenting with other OSs.

swarfega · 26 Dec 2015

Like CountMike I also experienced the jump a few years ago when the OCZ Vertex 2 was the top SSD to have. It made such a difference.

So when I replaced my old computer with this one I made sure it would have the latest SSDs from Samsung. This year I made the jump and removed my last hard drive so I now have three SSDs which are super fast (see specifications).

axe0 · 26 Dec 2015

My Crucial MX200 made my laptop boot in 10-15 seconds including BIOS time (5-10 seconds), but I am still using the 5.400RPM hard drive for most programs and backups internally.