SSD upgrade to laptop: Having sat through another sloooowwwww photo merge in photoshop, I bit the bullet and had a new SSD hard derive installed in my HP laptop. The laptop is a 2 year...

PhotoKurtz Loc: Carterville, IL

Having sat through another sloooowwwww photo merge in photoshop, I bit the bullet and had a new SSD hard derive installed in my HP laptop. The laptop is a 2 year old $300 HP with not too many whistles and bells. A local business tech shop installed an Samsung 850 EVO 2.5in SSD SATA#-250GB drive and things REALLY improved. Abour $325 installed and data cloned to new drive.

They put the old drive in an enclosure so now I have an extra 250GB external drive.

Recommend highly to speed up your processing.

Spider223

I did that about a year ago, and like you am very impressed with the speed increase. My old laptop runs cooler, battery lasts longer, and programs like Quicken are instantly on, along with Windows startup is now about 5-8 seconds.

Spider223

Double post

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

PhotoKurtz wrote:

Having sat through another sloooowwwww photo merge... (show quote)

Depending upon what you do, 250GB may be a little small. I would suggest 500GB at least.

PhotoKurtz Loc: Carterville, IL

Peterff wrote:

, 250GB may be a little small.

I discussed that with the guy. I don't store anything in the computer. Files go from camera through 'puter to external hard drive. Extra storage in the laptop wouldn't be much use. Would have cost only about $100 more. But thanks for the feedback.

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

PhotoKurtz wrote:

I discussed that with the guy. I don't store anything in the computer. Files go from camera through 'puter to external hard drive. Extra storage in the laptop wouldn't be much use. Would have cost only about $100 more. But thanks for the feedback.

OK, I only use my system disk for OS related operations, everything else is either internal HDD or external storage, around 24TB total, so maybe my usage is different, but I maxed out a 250GB SSD in around a year. If planning for say five years of use, I would consider the larger capacity.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

Peterff wrote:

Depending upon what you do, 250GB may be a little small. I would suggest 500GB at least.

I now keep my photos on my desktop and several backups, and only use my laptop for photo series currently being worked on. I did this upgrade a year or so ago, and it is so much faster!

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

Peterff wrote:

OK, I only use my system disk for OS related operations, everything else is either internal HDD or external storage, around 24TB total, so maybe my usage is different, but I maxed out a 250GB SSD in around a year. If planning for say five years of use, I would consider the larger capacity.

Excellent idea. We all probably read all this elsewhere, but just in case it's worth hearing. It's good to use the SSD just for the OS and applications and keep the bulk of data on HDD with HDD backup, internal or external. An SSD can get quite slow when nearly full and storing media files away from the system SSD helps keep it from filling up. Turn off any scheduled defragger and never defragment it. The SSD is good for editing and temporary, working storage of media files, just dont store them there and avoid going over 60-70% capacity. Someone may chime in and say this is old advice and is no longer needed, but it was strongly recommended not very long ago, and not by the manufacturers looking to sell larger drives.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

PhotoKurtz wrote:

Having sat through another sloooowwwww photo merge... (show quote)

I put the 500GB SSD in several computers - the wave of the future.
https://smile.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E500B-AM/dp/B00OBRE5UE/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1508929470&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+evo

Blaster34 Loc: Florida Treasure Coast

Just did that myself and it worked wonders on my 17" ASUS Laptop, very fast and got another storage device in the process.

jccash Loc: Longwood, Florida

Peterff wrote:

Depending upon what you do, 250GB may be a little small. I would suggest 500GB at least.

Upgraded my wife’s HP 17” laptop to 16 gig RAM and 1 TB SSD. Huge difference. Boots up in 23 seconds. Same when I did the same upgrade to my MBP. very happy.

Cape Coral Joel

You should trim a SSD drive it's similar to defragging. In windows 10 explorer type defrag select it and select the drive. Click optimize and it will do the rest in under a minute.

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

Cape Coral Joel wrote:

You should trim a SSD drive it's similar to defragging. In windows 10 explorer type defrag select it and select the drive. Click optimize and it will do the rest in under a minute.

I never came across SSD trimming before. Thank you.

SonyBug

I did the same upgrade, and added more RAM. Awesome performance.

SonyBug

Also just trimmed the C: drive in about 15 seconds. Read about it an give it a try on your SSD drives. It speeds them up.