jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

My new machine has 55 out of 500GB used - more to come.

crphoto8 Loc: Anaheim, California

Thanks to all UHH that responded to my post. I'll address some of the points that were raised.
1) My old HP uses ~210 GB on the C drive after 3-4 years so I decided to go with the 250GB SSD for the Dell. I have quite a few folders on the HP C: that
shouldn't really be there.
2) I tried to see my model, XPS 8910, on the Dell site but couldn't do it. There was a time when you could get there and configure a system from scratch just
like you want it. No more, now they have a limited number of machines with limited possible changes. This was confirmed in a chat with Dell. Costco had it
for $1,300, a discount of 150 to 200. The key for going with them was the addition of a second year warranty and their concierge service. Microcenter had
a similar machine for $1,400 but it has 16GB memory and a NVIDIA 1070/8GB VRAM which is an overkill. Also just one year of warranty. Microcenter can
custom build a PC but this ended up at ~$2,200, way over what I want to spend.
3) An aside - my old HP was misbehaving right after I bought it, restarting at will. The problem was in the power options sections; I had to uncheck the fast
restart option. This week the problem came back after a major Windows update. Sure enough, the fast restart option was on again.
4) My 2 PCs KVM works fine with corded keyboard and mouse. The audio option doesn't work but it's not a problem since I have 2 set of speakers.
5) I intend to use the new Dell mainly for photography (Adobe CC photography plan) where the faster PC will make a difference. I'll move completely to the Dell
at some point in the future.

Thanks,

Sam

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

It looks like you got a good deal. I always buy a computer with minimal memory and hard drive and then add them myself.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Can't speak for Orrie, but in my case between, thousands of raw image files, thousands of lossless music files, videos, email with attachments, thousands of MS Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, thousands of PDF files, and all the installed software and the operating system I use, not to mention the space for a swap file and many gigabytes dedicated to the recycle bin, I personally need at least a 1 terabyte drive to store everything and give me room for growth.

crphoto8 Loc: Anaheim, California

I always have more than one drive, either internal or external. The C: should be reserved for OS, installed programs, various system files, etc. Data files should reside on different drive(s) and should be backed up.
I have 2 internal drives on my old PC where I put my images. There're also 3 external drives which serve as redundant backups. You can't be too careful!

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I've got well over 250gb of raw images alone. In total I'm currently using a bit more than 500gb for everything on my machine. My newest machine has a 250gb SSD drive as a C drive where the operating system, all the programs and some data resides, and an internal 1 terabyte D drive where all the rest of the data resides, including all my image, music, and video files.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Agree completely. I do an incremental backup to three external drives every couple of days and right after any important changes to my data.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

I agree. 250GB can be small for some people, and I have all my data on other disks. I ran out of space of a 250GB SSD, so now have a 500GB SSD as my main drive, 800GB SSD and about 24TB in total. It can add up very fast depending upon what you do. Ripping DVDs to disk adds up fast at around 8GB per DVD, as do CDs at 700MB per CD. It's very convenient for streaming and backup, but it sure eats disk space.

My wife's laptop has a 500GB disk, and suddenly appeared full, yet the backups were only half that size. It was some weird Windows 10 setting that took some research to untangle, and it's now back to around 220GB used, but I for one consider 250GB to be small these days.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

One really nice thing about Dell's XPS line is when you call Tech Support you get sent to a dedicated call center in Austin, TX (I think) vs the main Dell support center in Mumbai.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I have two external drive as backups, but one is on its way out - a 2TB Seagate. I'll buy another drive and put it into that case. I also have a Synology NAS that I use to backup seven folders.

tcthome Loc: NJ

Thanks for the link jerryc41!

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

I feel your pain. My old Dell tower went dark in February and I reverted to using my HP laptop until I could do something about it. In August the laptop went dark, too (not a monitor problem--I was using a Samsung 27" monitor on both and it is still working). I recently bought a new Dell tower and am attempting to install my software on it (having trouble finding some of the installation disks). The new machine has 8GB RAM and 1TB hard drive. I did have all of my photographs and important documents stored on a 500GB external drive, so I didn't lose any of that. (FWIW, the old Dell was toast, but the C: drive was able to be copied off and I will be getting it back soon. Both the old and new Dells had Win7Pro so I'm hoping to be able to migrate some of the software.)

rfmaude41 Loc: Lancaster, Texas (DFW area)

I've got a 750GB SSD and it's almost 2/3 full, but then again, I've probably got 150 - 200 applications loaded