SSD (Page 2): I've found the most dramatic difference comes in boot time. Two out of the three computers on my home network are running M2's whereas an older studio PC, I swapped out...

Haydon

Longshadow wrote:

Tomorrow I want to check some start/restart times ... (show quote)

I've found the most dramatic difference comes in boot time. Two out of the three computers on my home network are running M2's whereas an older studio PC, I swapped out with a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD. The much older studio PC takes 19 seconds to boot but it's running 8 Gb RAM DD3 with a 1st generation i5 660 Intel Clarkdale with an old ATI 1 Gb. 5850 GPU from 2009. It's powering 2 monitors. Prior to the HD swap that took close to 50 seconds from a cold boot. I really appreciate the quiet boots opposing the noisy mechanical drives. I could never go back to a boot drive that's mechanical.

The two builds with M2's are running 8th generation Intel's one with an i3 and the editing machine with an i7 8700K. Surprisingly the i3 laptop is one second faster than the i7 but it's powering 3 monitors and some extra peripherals. They boot at 13 seconds and 14 seconds respectfully on a cold boot.

The one caveat with the laptop is on a restart when the laptop is warm. it's considerably slower under those conditions. The confined space of the laptop apparently initiates a protection system on the M2 to protect the thermo when the machine is warm. The i7 is consistent with 14 seconds on a cold or warm boot.

On the physical opening of programs, it's not nearly as noticeable in speed differences but it does feel a little snappier.

TriX wrote:

Yes. Unless you have an archaic computer, there is... (show quote)

Totally agree TriX. That's very expensive in todays standards. The migration software that comes with Samsung SSD's has worked flawlessly with 2 of my machines. Very simple to use and took about 20 minutes.

Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

Fabulous1too wrote:

In your opinion, does having an SSD really that much better? There's a "mom and pop" computer place here in my town advertising he can install a 1TB for about $350, is it that much better? Thanks in advance.

The price is too high unless you need someone to do the install of the SSD and transfer the data.

My laptop has a 1 TB SSB and a 1TB HD with a 6 core (12 thread) i7 processor running WIN 10 Pro. It boots up in 5 seconds. I keep the programs on the SSD and dynamic data in the 32 GB of RAM or on the SSD. The HD stores my images and data associated with other engineering programs I use.

The SSD will make you smile!

Doc Barry

johneccles Loc: Leyland UK

Fabulous1too wrote:

In your opinion, does having an SSD really that much better? There's a "mom and pop" computer place here in my town advertising he can install a 1TB for about $350, is it that much better? Thanks in advance.

By all means, buy an SSD, but $350 is one hell of a lot of cash for a very simple job.
Here in the UK I could buy a 1TB SSD for £80 it would take a few minutes to fit. Loading the OS takes an hour or so, which means you will be paying the computer place almost $300 an hour, during which time they will be carrying out several other jobs to earn even more money!

kubota king Loc: NW , Pa.

I agree , $350 is a lot more than I would charge to install it . As posted before me , you can get a good 1 tb ssd for a little more than $100 dollars . They are charging a lot for labor . I would charge around $150 /$160 . I've been in staples when some one would come and ask the computer people questions and then hear how much they told them it would cost . Way more than I would charge . The geek squad wanted to charge a friend of my sister $150 to fix her computer
, she left and came to my sister's place and I heard her talking and I had her laptop fixed in 5 minutes ..... It brakes my heart to hear how much some of these places charge people ....Tom's Computer Repair

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Dat Quach wrote:

SDD is better than HDD for sure in booting time an... (show quote)

Actually, if you still want one, you have 2 paths forward for an internal drive. First, although your MB doesn’s support an NVME M2 SSD, you can attach a SATA-connected SSD to the same SATA ports you are currently using for your HD. If you have an open SATA 6Gb port, this is easy. It will be slower than an NVME connected drive, but still much faster than a HD. Secondly, there are PCIe to NVME converters available inexpensively if you have the spare PCIe slot and room for the adapter plus the SSD. I haven’t personally tried the adapter method, but it is feasible and substantially faster than the SATA connected method. Finally, there actually are PCIe interface SSDs, but they are designed for commercial servers and very pricey. And finally, if you want an external SSD, you can always attach via USB if you have a USB-3 port available (I wouldn’t bother if it’s USB-2).

peterg Loc: Santa Rosa, CA

TriX wrote:

Having said that, $350 is a lot for 1 TB of SSD. A substantial part of that cost must be installation and transferring the data (if you don’t feel comfortable doing it) because the drive is in the $100-$140 range depending on the specific drive.. If you don’t feel comfortable doing the installation and transfer per the instructions, then consider buying a Samsung 860

Agree. For an eternal, a 1TB SSD on Amazon is <$140. An enclosure is about $8. Cable about $6. If you want to use it as a primary internal drive, then make a clone of the existing drive and swap.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Fabulous1too wrote:

In your opinion, does having an SSD really that much better? There's a "mom and pop" computer place here in my town advertising he can install a 1TB for about $350, is it that much better? Thanks in advance.

Absolutely faster performance!! For a desktop, it is not difficult to do on your own, but you will need some software and some tech ability.
The shop has given you a fair price for the job.
Go for it! You will see a difference.
Mark

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

Fabulous1too wrote:

In your opinion, does having an SSD really that much better? There's a "mom and pop" computer place here in my town advertising he can install a 1TB for about $350, is it that much better? Thanks in advance.

Simple and concise - YES!

Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada

Yes you want an M.2 drive, and you want to have one that uses a PCIe interface. They are nearly 4x faster than SATA drives.

Dik

Dat Quach Loc: California

TriX wrote:

Actually, if you still want one, you have 2 paths ... (show quote)

Thanks so much TriX, you have been very helpful. I do have spare PCIe 2.0 x16, SATA and USB-3 ports and will explore the options you laid out. Does the SATA 6GB port have a blue housing v. Black? I saw two colors and thought they are the same.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I think adding a SSD to an old machine is foolish. Such a machine was designed for an earlier OS than 10. Microsoft and other developers eventually stop supporting their legacy software and OS and eventually you will have to upgrade. If you have the money and even if you do not want to spend it, you should upgrade to Win 10. Even if it has a HDD, performance will be noticeably better and you will not have to worry about compatibility and workarounds to get an older machine to work properly. A SSD will be even faster for starting the OS and programs. However, you may not notice as dramatic speed increase for data. I think that may be due to data files being smaller than programs and paging.

At a minimum, the boot drive should be SSD. I suspect for most of us, 250 G should do.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Dat Quach wrote:

Thanks so much TriX, you have been very helpful. I do have spare PCIe 2.0 x16, SATA and USB-3 ports and will explore the options you laid out. Does the SATA 6GB port have a blue housing v. Black? I saw two colors and thought they are the same.

One color is likely SATA 3Gb, and the other is SATA 6Gb (use a 6Gb for the SSD). There is no color standard, but on my MB, the blue connectors are 6Gb - not sure about Intel, but the MB manual will have the information.

n4jee Loc: New Bern, NC

I have a smaller 120 GB SSD as my "C" drive. I install my programs on that drive. I have a conventional 2 TB "D" drive where I store all my data. My computer is an older machine with an Intel Core i3 CPU @3.4 GHz. I have 12 GB RAM. It made a significant improvement in boot up time and program load time. I don't notice the time to access data.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Fabulous1too wrote:

In your opinion, does having an SSD really that much better? There's a "mom and pop" computer place here in my town advertising he can install a 1TB for about $350, is it that much better? Thanks in advance.

It will make your computer fell like it's brand new again. It will quadruple the speed of the applications and your operating systems performance.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Haydon wrote:

....
You might want to look around. Without any hard searching I found a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD for $137.00 on Amazon. Routinely, you can find them at Microcenter for less.

Longshadow wrote:

Okay, so based on your estimated 1/3 of the start time, my (nine year old) computer having a power-up to login time of 72 seconds, and a <power-up> login to ready time of 45 seconds, totaling ≈120 seconds, I'll save 80 seconds (1.333 minutes). It will only take about 40 seconds with an SSD instead of 120 seconds with an HDD. I imagine there is even more time savings with a slower computer.

After checking boot and program start times, I have decided that for ME an SSD is not cost effective enough. My desktop sleeps most of the time, so gaining a whopping 80 seconds on boot-up and 30 seconds here and there for some apps to start and become stable would be of very little consequence to me.
I'm not worried about a HDD mechanical MTBF either, as all of my computers in the past 20 years have been replaced mostly by attrition or the mother board died.
(If I had a computer that took 15 minutes to boot, I'd replace the computer....)
This has been an interesting exercise.