SSD: Is It Worth It To Upgrade?

First, what is an SSD and why should you care? SSD is short for Solid State Drive, it is a storage device that uses flash memory. It is much like a USB thumb drive, but for storing larger amounts of data. Many laptops that are more than a few years old generally have a traditional, mechanical hard drive installed in them. They work great and are a tried and true method of storage. But, over time those mechanical parts wear down and they slow down. Even if your traditional drive is running at 100% health and at its maximum potential, an SSD is over 4x faster. This translates to quicker boot times, faster program loads, and overall let time sitting watching that wheel spin while your computer does a simple task. How-To Geek has an excellent article What is a Solid State Drive, and Do I Need One? If you would like to learn more!

One huge drawback of SSDs has been the price per size. Over the last year we’ve seen prices fall very dramatically. Prices are to a point where it makes sense to have an SSD as your main data drive. Even just over a year ago, a 250GB Solid State Drive was over $100. But now you can have 1TB for about that price and a 500GB for around $60. If you are in need of large amounts of data storage, we generally recommend a 250-500GB main drive and 2-4TB secondary drive. Our main computer here has a 500GB Solid State main drive and a 2TB secondary drive for data. That way we get the speed of the SSD and the data storage capabilities of the secondary drive, all for an affordable cost.