Do I really need SSD?

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Chaitanya

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Master Geek

#111109 24-Oct-2012 11:32

I believe the high cost of some cutting edge cool laptops ( Ultrabooks and new Mac Book Pros with Retina) is partly due to the high cost of SSD. So it gets me thinking if I really need a SSD in my next laptop.

What do you guys think. Do I really need SSD for a personal laptop for home use. Suddenly HDD is looking very fragile!

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#705598 24-Oct-2012 11:36

Yes, you want it. In order of things you need to get best performance these days:

- Memory: 4GB good, 8GB better
- SSD: can't compare the gains in speed

Jaxson

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#705602 24-Oct-2012 11:39

It's a pity more laptops don't have two drive bays and/or enough SSD memory built into to create a OS drive. I've heard great things about startup speed etc when the OS at least is on a SSD.

Ragnor

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#705612 24-Oct-2012 11:50

Yes!

1: SSD's have come down a lot, eg: 120GB SSD is < $140 these days.
2: In a laptop I'd rather have a blazing small amount of storage than a large clunker.

CYaBro

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#705653 24-Oct-2012 12:52

Jaxson: It's a pity more laptops don't have two drive bays and/or enough SSD memory built into to create a OS drive. I've heard great things about startup speed etc when the OS at least is on a SSD.

I got a cheap caddy for my laptop that allowed me to pull out the optical drive, that I never used anyway, and install a 2nd HDD.
So I moved the original laptop HDD to the now available 2nd HDD bay and installed a 120GB SSD as the primary HDD.
The caddy cost like US$10 on ebay.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

boby55

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#705661 24-Oct-2012 13:04

Do you need an SSD? No. a HDD will work.

Should you get an SSD +? HELL YES!

The speed increase as stated above its un comparable, You won't regret it.

If you still want large space on your laptop I would sugest looking on Ebay / Trademe for a adaptor bay to fit so you can take out the optical drive and put in another drive or look for a laptop with two hard drive bays and swap one for a ssd

gehenna

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#705680 24-Oct-2012 13:24

Spindle based drives are the main bottleneck in computers today. Using an SSD is a whole other world in comparison.

Do you ever get the spinning wheel while apps or documents load? Do you ever get the egg timer? Do you ever click on something and it doesn't do anything for 3 - 5 seconds?

Does your computer boot up and then halt on the splash screen for longer than you'd expect?

If you can answer yes to any of those then you'll get a huge improvement in performance from and SSD.

If not, then it probably doesn't matter that much to you and you're fine with a spindle drive.

That said, some SSD's are physically smaller than their hard drive counterparts which is why they are the only option in some ultrabooks.

myopinion

938 posts

Ultimate Geek

#705705 24-Oct-2012 14:03

Need no. Want yes. Speed gain is amazing.

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Chaitanya

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Master Geek

#705735 24-Oct-2012 15:13

Thanks guys. I am now convinced that SSD is the way forward.

heavenlywild

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#705753 24-Oct-2012 15:39

Other than speed, an SSD drive is quieter, produces less heat, and doesn't create any vibrations when compared to a HDD.

khull

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#705786 24-Oct-2012 16:21

Absolute Yes with a period.

If you set cost aside, don't even think twice. There is no need to even spend any extra time thinking, every laptop made in the last couple years will benefit from running on a SSD as the main operating system.