Will a Solid State Hard Drive Change My Life?

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

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I have our 2 primary computers at the house that are ~3-4 years old.
Acer Aspire which I have added more memory and upgraded to Windows 7

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They seem slower these days and I am wondering if I just swap out the current C drive with a solid state drive, will I notice a significant improvement in performance?
 

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U said "deets".....I don't think I can help you.
 
Yes. However it might just be better to build a new pc if you have 4 500 bucks to spend.
 
Yes.
Our older Acer aspire laptop with only a ssd is by far the fastest. Of course our Acer aspire has 16gb ram upgrade also. It is even faster than the brand new MSI gaming laptop with 32gb ram.
 
We call this 'throwing hardware'. Try a few things first.

Start(the little round thing in the corner), control panel, system, advanced system settings on the left side.

Once in there, you'll see four or five tabs. If the 'advanced' tab is there, you are logged in as an admin and can make changes. Locate the 'performance' box and click settings. Remember this location because you'll be coming back here several times.

First, you can adjust how Windows reacts to you, and set the optimization of the visual effects. Your best bet here is to choose 'custom' and start messing with all those little radio buttons down below. Some of them will really slow things down on startup and when running various apps. Some have little effect. Mess around in here first, and see if you can make some improvements.

After you fool with that for a few days, come back to this location and click 'performance options' and 'advanced'. Now, you are really going to mess things up! See if the resource allocation is set for programs or background. Obviously set it for programs radio button. Then, to really have fun, start messing with the demand page size. Click 'change' and a little box will come up allowing you to remove the safety of Windows page management and go rogue. All the advice I can give you here, is make notes of where you've been.

Sometimes a bigger page will work better, and sometimes a smaller page will work better. Here's the thing, you are messing with the internals of how Windows gets to play with your computer. Windows has a habit, since back in Win 98 time of sucking up all avail RAM and loading all kinds of junk that you rarely/never use. They do it, because they can! If you make the swap file too big, Windows may load more junk on start up. If you make it too small, Windows may not load enough junk, and need to go swap for a while. It's a crap shoot, and I will make NO recommendation on what to set, because each install is unique.

Before you throw hardware, try fooling around with the settings in the Advanced tab of System properties and see what happens. If you still want to throw hardware, a SSD is a nice improvement, but there are grades of SSDs out there, and you may not see much gain unless you are swapping/paging constantly. You've already made the big cure and added more RAM, which Windows saw and instantly filled up with OS junk.
 
If you are asking the question I doubt Cowboy's recommendation will be much help, although I definitely agree that tweaking settings can do a lot to increase performance. I also doubt that a digital drive is going to overcome the speed deficiencies of an older PC in a significant way.

Have you run any of the utilities such as Ccleaner that clean out junk left behind by uninstalled programs and the accumulation of temporary files? That, followed by a disk optimization can often help.
 
Unless you have a really old machine, an SSD is about the biggest performance increase I've seen in a very long time.

Agree with doc on making sure you are not bound by ram and paging, but we have really seen a boost on our developer's PCs just by adding SSD. Not so much on the support center computers. (Except the techs validating databases. With mirrored 10k drives, the SSD was more than 10x faster on a db validation.)
 
I'll second Mark's advice as well. Do some disk housekeeping, and once you're done with that, whether Windows is set to automatically defrag or not, run defrag. If you run defrag and the note says it's not needed at this time, do it anyway. Clean up first, then defrag.
 
Here's a nice Samsung SSD on sale with promo code and free shipping. I use an SSD as my boot drive. Love it.

Also switch to Linux Mint. :D
 
docmirror said:
We call this 'throwing hardware'. Try a few things first.

Start(the little round thing in the corner), control panel, system, advanced system settings on the left side.

Once in there, you'll see four or five tabs. If the 'advanced' tab is there, you are logged in as an admin and can make changes. Locate the 'performance' box and click settings. Remember this location because you'll be coming back here several times.

First, you can adjust how Windows reacts to you, and set the optimization of the visual effects. Your best bet here is to choose 'custom' and start messing with all those little radio buttons down below. Some of them will really slow things down on startup and when running various apps. Some have little effect. Mess around in here first, and see if you can make some improvements.

After you fool with that for a few days, come back to this location and click 'performance options' and 'advanced'. Now, you are really going to mess things up! See if the resource allocation is set for programs or background. Obviously set it for programs radio button. Then, to really have fun, start messing with the demand page size. Click 'change' and a little box will come up allowing you to remove the safety of Windows page management and go rogue. All the advice I can give you here, is make notes of where you've been.

Sometimes a bigger page will work better, and sometimes a smaller page will work better. Here's the thing, you are messing with the internals of how Windows gets to play with your computer. Windows has a habit, since back in Win 98 time of sucking up all avail RAM and loading all kinds of junk that you rarely/never use. They do it, because they can! If you make the swap file too big, Windows may load more junk on start up. If you make it too small, Windows may not load enough junk, and need to go swap for a while. It's a crap shoot, and I will make NO recommendation on what to set, because each install is unique.

Before you throw hardware, try fooling around with the settings in the Advanced tab of System properties and see what happens. If you still want to throw hardware, a SSD is a nice improvement, but there are grades of SSDs out there, and you may not see much gain unless you are swapping/paging constantly. You've already made the big cure and added more RAM, which Windows saw and instantly filled up with OS junk.
Click to expand...

Agreed in principle, but they still only have 4GB of RAM installed. If they'll support it, I think 8 GB RAM would give more improvement than the SSD for most people.

Unless, of course, we're talking about really data-intensive work, in which case the SSD probably would have the edge. For most users, I think RAM would yield bigger bang for the buck.

Rich
 
My kid put Samsung SSD in all of my computers at work. Noted a marked improvement Bryan. Well worth it imo along with additional ram.
 
More RAM is always good. Windows will gobble up everything you put in. Right to the point where it'll still page. Every computer pages, it's how the page/swap is manage that this thread is discussing. Wanna know how old I am? I had a Kaypro luggable with dual 5-1/4 floppys. I loaded PC-DOS and the notes said I should always keep a floppy in drive B, as it will speed up the computer when paging occurs. Gulp - I recall that quite clearly, watching the little red light flash, and the drive go diiiiiiirp-click-bzzzzt-click-diiiiiiiiirp-bzzzzzt-click,click,click.
 
I do not know anything about RAM. I have 4Gb. No clue what type it is.
I know it came with 2 sticks and I added 2 more from random parted out computers.

Probably would be good to know what the fastest RAM I can put in my machine is and get 4 matched sticks.

I am running CCleaner now and I optomized everything, adjusted page file, etc

How can I find out what the best (fastest) RAM is for my machine and the max it will hold?

I am going to add the SSHD but I am holding that off until I get my birthday check from my Grandmother on Wednesday. She is so awesome. She's hanging in there with a dollar for every year. I get 39 dollars this year!

In all seriousness, where can I find out my RAM capabilities?
 
What is the model of your Acer?
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I do not know anything about RAM. I have 4Gb. No clue what type it is.
I know it came with 2 sticks and I added 2 more from random parted out computers.

Probably would be good to know what the fastest RAM I can put in my machine is and get 4 matched sticks.

I am running CCleaner now and I optomized everything, adjusted page file, etc

How can I find out what the best (fastest) RAM is for my machine and the max it will hold?

I am going to add the SSHD but I am holding that off until I get my birthday check from my Grandmother on Wednesday. She is so awesome. She's hanging in there with a dollar for every year. I get 39 dollars this year!

In all seriousness, where can I find out my RAM capabilities?
Click to expand...

I usually just google the make/model of the pc or laptop I'm working with. We don't buy either with less than 8GB these days...

Talking about old hardware... I remember a UNIX computer I once maintained that had a 20MB 8 inch hard drive. The stepper motor was so powerful that when the OS was paging that drive would literally walk across the table. Short cables are the only reasons it never hit the floor..
 
The only thing about computers that I hate more than Windows is spinning hard drives. Both have been nothing but disappointing, money-sucking pieces of crap. In fairness my old MacBook has a 750g spinning drive. It's second, and it's failing. My newer MacBook with flash memory runs circles around it.
 
16GB of ram and an SSD and you'll have a like-new machine.
 
Just looked up the specs on this machine, 4GB max.
I know my chips are below 800mHz though (maybe 300 or 500 I have to look)

Wondering if I should just get the fastest PC2 6400 DDr2

Good news is it looks like RAM upgrade is going to be cheap.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
... I am going to add the SSHD ...
Click to expand...

Bryan, the more knowledgeable guys can confirm, but it's my understanding that an SSHD (solid state hybrid drive) is different from an SSD (solid state drive). The first one still uses spinny disks, the second one doesn't.

The SSHD is a standard disk-based hard drive (say 2 TB) with a small amount of solid-state memory on the front end (say 8 GB). I presume that the drive intelligently puts frequently accessed data in the 8 GB.
 
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register@teamandras.com said:
Bryan, the more knowledgeable guys can confirm, but it's my understanding that an SSHD (solid state hybrid drive) is different from an SSD (solid state drive). The first one still uses spinny disks, the second one doesn't.

The SSHD is a standard disk-based hard drive (say 2 TB) with a small amount of solid-state memory on the front end (say 8 GB). I presume that the drive intelligently puts frequently accessed data in the 8 GB.
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I want zero moving parts.
 
Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree.
The only thing open on my computer is a tab for POA, and a tab for Youtube (no video playing) and photoshop.

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That's why I said there are 'grades' of SSDs out there. You don't want a hybrid with platters, heads and a large solid state buffer area. Specify that you want an "SSD".

These folks seem to keep up with the tech pretty well.

http://www.ssdreview.com/
 
My $0.02... Give this one to the kids and get something new. Don't get crazy, but it's time to spend some money.
 
brian];1916216 said:
My $0.02... Give this one to the kids and get something new. Don't get crazy, but it's time to spend some money.
Click to expand...

Yep, I think that is what I am going to do.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree.
The only thing open on my computer is a tab for POA, and a tab for Youtube (no video playing) and photoshop.
Click to expand...

Well, as a snapshot, that's either you hosting porn, or you have a virus!

Congrats.

To see your mem usage click on the memory tab and give us a snapshot of that with the bar graph.
 
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We do currently have 2 phones, smart TV, to PCs all sharing the network.
 
Not sure he has a virus.... Other than that application known as YouTube... If you weren't just watching a few videos on YouTube , then yea, you may have a virus. (Unless you have the pc somehow routing packets for your network, the network utilization graph is only for traffic for the pc...)

Not sure if this is a for fun pc or if you use it for work, but a couple of months ago I about came unglued on an employee trying to make something like this work. A couple of basic/standard dell pcs later and I have employees actually working again.... Instead of fiddling with an old 32 bit boat anchor.
 
brian];1916235 said:
Not sure he has a virus.... Other than that application known as YouTube... If you weren't just watching a few videos on YouTube , then yea, you may have a virus. (Unless you have the pc somehow routing packets for your network, the network utilization graph is only for traffic for the pc...)

Not sure if this is a for fun pc or if you use it for work, but a couple of months ago I about came unglued on an employee trying to make something like this work. A couple of basic/standard dell pcs later and I have employees actually working again.... Instead of fiddling with an old 32 bit boat anchor.
Click to expand...

Yours may have been 32 bit, but his is 64-bit. But with only 4 GB of RAM, that really doesn't get him much. But your point is still valid.
 
I'll tell you what, I have an older (5 year, probably more) HP workstation running Windows 7 and an SSD woke it he f**** up. It's better than it was new. By far. What took 5 minutes to boot before now takes 20 seconds. Performance in every area is better. Biggest bang for your buck. A new disk drive won't come close.
 
gprellwitz said:
Yours may have been 32 bit, but his is 64-bit. But with only 4 GB of RAM, that really doesn't get him much. But your point is still valid.
Click to expand...

Missed that one. I never understood why they took 64bit CPUs and designed a motherboard that only accepted 4GB RAM. Then again, I still find clients running a 32bit version of Windows on a 64 bit CPU.

An SSD on this one would make a noticeable difference. But I would add a few dollars to the cost of the SSD and get a basic PC with a basic hard drive that will run circles around this one with the SSD...
 
Don't know if this exists, but is there a SS hard drive that is both accessible from computer and from iPad?
 
My macbook air never freezes or gets the loading icon/mouse cursor. Only 1.3 ghz i5 and 4 gb ram. SSD makes a huge difference. I usually keep 5 or 6 desktops running with mail, browser, office, photo editor, etc.
 
Will an SSD change your life?

Yes.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
brian];1916216 said:
My $0.02... Give this one to the kids and get something new. Don't get crazy, but it's time to spend some money.
Click to expand...
There's a custom computer shop near me, and every five years or so I spend a bit of money on a custom build...and a LESSER amount of money for the wife's new machine. :)

Last time around I got a PC with Windows 7 and an SSD. My previous tower with XP took about three minutes to boot up (nearer five towards the end), while the new computer takes less than 30 seconds. Spend about $1200 on mine, about $400 on the wife's. Mine had maxed out memory, Win 7 Pro, upgraded video card, removable hard disk bays, etc., and hers was pretty much basic (just uses it for word processing and surfing the net).

As I was researching, I was concerned about the reliability of the SSDs. So I included a conventional hard drive as a data drive, and put it in one of the two removable hard drive bays. It let me buy a smaller SSD, since it's not going to store pictures, videos, etc.

If the SSD crashes, I should have the data left...and if the data drive crashes, I've got the SSD still running to try to get some sort of recovery. The second bay lets me rotate a pair of hard disks for offsite backup. Also, when we go on vacation, I can take the data drive out and hide it, in case there's a break-in.

Took my wife's old computer to use as a replacement media PC in the den (mini-case, so it doesn't take up much room). Bought a cheap SSD (just 120 G) and loaded XP. Expected a big performance jump, but didn't get it. Takes ~ 1-2 minutes to boot up, and otherwise can't really tell the difference with the SSD. Might be XP, might be shy of memory.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Bryan: I suggest building your own new comp. It's a lot of fun. I have built my own for the last 15+ years and while the cost savings isn't what it once was, it's still enjoyable and you get exactly what you want without bloatware. Just don't bend the CPU pins. :yikes:
 
SSD made a huge difference. Ill never go back for a primary source of storage to run my OS. Ill use an optical drive for general storage.
 
The AST180-UD360A uses the nVidia GeForce6150SE (MCP61). As I recall there was a bug in its SATA NCQ implementation. Plus, it's only SATA 3Gbps instead of the newer SATA 6Gbps or 16Gbps. I don't think you'll get the full benefit of an SSD on this machine.

P.S. Your display name makes me think of C83
 
We replaced one of the hard drives on a HP Pavilion laptop with a SSD and it did make difference.

Boot time is quicker.
 
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