Solid State Drive...worth it?
February 1, 2016 12:10 PM   Subscribe

I'm buying a desktop computer to replace a series of failed laptops. Currently considering the HP ENVY desktop series...but do I want to spring for a solid state drive? I do lots of video and music editing...will I want the speed for that? It's been ages since I bought a computer.
posted by agregoli to Computers & Internet (29 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
You could consider two drives, one SSD for boot and programs, and a second drive (spinning platter) for your data and scratch/editing space. It's nice to boot up in 2-3 seconds from POST.
posted by k5.user at 12:13 PM on February 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


My advise is much the same as k5.user. You get an amazing performance boost with SSD.

That said, avoid the Envy line. I've placed a few Envy units with clients and they are disproportionately troublesome. Go with a less-premium HP brand and add ram or processor as a custom option, if that's what you need.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 12:16 PM on February 1, 2016


Response by poster: Ok thanks...good to know what to avoid
posted by agregoli at 12:18 PM on February 1, 2016


Response by poster: Oh and I want to pay under $800 or a little over, preferably!
posted by agregoli at 12:20 PM on February 1, 2016


I bought an Envy with SSD about a year ago. I had consistent problems with blue screens until if finally went back to HP in the fall. They replaced the SSD and all has been well since.

I chose the Envy because at that instant in time Dell did not have a competitive offering that I could find. I would seek out the best deal now and not worry too much about the vendor.

My box has the SSD plus a 1T regular drive. Way more than I needed, but the SSD by itself did not seem like enough, and 1T was the smallest available as the add-on.

In answer to part of your question, yes go for the SSD. The reduction in boot time is worth it unless you are on s tight budget.
posted by SemiSalt at 12:26 PM on February 1, 2016


Response by poster: Was looking at Dell XPS too but don't think that's solid state. I want this computer to last 5 years at least!
posted by agregoli at 12:27 PM on February 1, 2016


+1 for booting off SSD and having the backup be another drive. Also check reddit.com/r/buildapc for good deals / part recommendations - they are a wealth of knowledge.
posted by bbqturtle at 12:31 PM on February 1, 2016


Yeah, boot from the SSD and you can put literally everything else on other drives. I have a small SSD with windows and my RAW editing program on it, then a HDD for games and large programs, then another HDD for my data.

My experience is:
OS on the SSD = HUGE performance boost
Games on the SSD = Moderate boost, depends on the game. Not worth it to me price/performance, but given the way costs are going will be soon
Data on the SSD = Eh.
posted by selfnoise at 12:36 PM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: So fast boot is the only real benefit, it seems...not sure that's worth the extra cost to me. My old laptop hard drive is fine but laptop is dead so I'm prob installing that into a new case tho. Hmmm.
posted by agregoli at 12:38 PM on February 1, 2016


I just increased my system ram to 16 GB and added an SSD. I am really astonished how much faster and more responsive the system is. I mean, astonished. Highly recommended

As mentioned above, you don't need a huge SSD to do the trick. 250 GB might be plenty and 500 GB is definitely plenty. You want your windows system and all installed software on the SSD, but anything else (such as files, media, documents) can/should go on a regular hard drive.
posted by flug at 12:39 PM on February 1, 2016


It's not just fast boot. Everything happens faster. All the little delays when you launch a program, load a web page, play music, etc. They go away. It really spoils you. It makes a computer with a spinning platter feel unusably unresponsive in comparison.
posted by strangecargo at 12:43 PM on February 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


The improvements I've noted are: Programs start up faster, documents load faster, browser starts faster, browser responds much faster. Same goes for any reasonably large complex program startup (Word, Excel, GIMP, Acrobat Pro, etc). Things like right-clicking a file in Windows Explorer happen instantly instead of after a delay.

The benefits are very clearly far more than just "it boots faster". What the comment above about putting your "boot" on it mean, is that you want your windows and other main programs (such as Office, browser, other software programs) on the SSD. You don't want/need data or documents on it. However, the improvement from having Windows & software on the SSD go very far beyond just booting faster.
posted by flug at 12:44 PM on February 1, 2016


No, fast boot is not the only benefit- people are saying that you should put the SSD as the "boot" drive, meaning that the OS and all of its other stuff is on that drive. It makes the entire OS faster and probably is the single most important upgrade you can make to make a computer "feel fast", once you get past the "enough RAM" point.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 12:46 PM on February 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


SSD prices are low enough that you can put all or most of your programs on $80 of drive (except for a huge game collection or maybe the entire Adobe suite.) In my opinion it's a necessary purchase in the context of computer upgrades.
posted by michaelh at 12:46 PM on February 1, 2016


Echoing strangecargo, this is the first time I've had a computer that actually felt fast & responsive when doing every day-to-day task since maybe Wordperfect 5.1 under DOS. You click something, instant response. Yeah, we had that in 1989 (as long as you were satisfied running one program at a time in text mode, etc). But it just hasn't happened for me from Win 3.1 and all the way up. In my current system with 4 GB ram and a regular hard drive, the problem had actually gotten worse in recent years, because programs have gotten so much more memory intensive. With 16 GB ram and an SSD, the very same system is now fast.

FYI when I had 4 GB the system would float along using 3.2 GB or so--and I figured it was fine, because so much RAM was sitting apparently unused. But with 16 GB installed, the very same system typically floats along at 8-10GB ram used. Probably 12 GB would be enough for everyday use but 16 GB gives a bit more wiggle room.

Regardless (and if you can't tell) I just can't recommend the combo of SSD and sufficiently large system RAM (12 GB minimum, 16 GB or more preferred especially if you are editing video, large graphic files etc) highly enough.

I'm a "power user" in the sense that I tend to have lots of browser, word, excel, and acrobat tabs open at any given time, and have a dual monitor setup. But otherwise rather typical "office" use. Officer users need snappy response times more than anybody, and with today's operating systems & software, that means lots of ram & and an SSD . . .
posted by flug at 12:56 PM on February 1, 2016


SSD all the way. The performance cannot be beaten for the cost of an install. I have a lot of software so 256 GB is getting kind of small but I make sure that I have a minimum 20% free space on my drives.
posted by jadepearl at 12:58 PM on February 1, 2016


If you buy a SSD with enough space to handle your audio and video files and their editing software, I 100% guarantee you will notice a huge performance difference.
posted by anti social order at 12:59 PM on February 1, 2016


Response by poster: Can someone recommend this type of set up (boot off ssd) in a ready-to-purchase computer? That won't cost 1,000? Or is this more of a special set up? My dream is to go someplace like Best Buy and walk out with a computer I can work with very quickly, and be able to install my laptop hard drive into as well. As you can see, I'm mostly clueless.
posted by agregoli at 1:03 PM on February 1, 2016


Can someone recommend this type of set up (boot off ssd) in a ready-to-purchase computer?

You're unlikely to find them in your price range; they'll almost certainly treat an SSD as an add-on and either explicitly or implicitly charge you waaaaay too much for it.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:26 PM on February 1, 2016


Response by poster: That's what I'm seeing...I am waaaay not technical enough to set up an ssd into a system myself. Lots to think about
posted by agregoli at 1:32 PM on February 1, 2016


SSD is night and day if you put Windows on it. It's actually a reasonably straightforward process (you want to 'clone' your windows install onto the SSD, and then set it to boot from that drive), but once you get used to pressing on and having your desktop there basically instantly you won't want to go back.

For games and things the difference is modest, it's the OS that makes all the difference.
posted by Sebmojo at 1:46 PM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Best answer: You do want an SSD, for all the reasons above - and make sure you've got enough space after you've put the OS and apps on it for your editing software's temporary/working files. It's not a huge pain to keep tons of stuff on a secondary hard disk, but it is good to keep as much of any project you're working on, on the SSD. I rhink most mainstream editing software is now used by enough people with SSD/HDD combos that good working practise and configuration info is available.

The most cost-effective way to get the system you want may be to find a local IT guy who'll take an off-the-shelf PC and put the drive (and perhaps more memory) in it for you, and do the OS cloning/install. The process is normally straightorward and not time-consuming (the OS cloning, and if they're any good they'll have done it tons of times before. Even if it takes a couple of hours of chargeable time, it should still come in under the shelf price of an equivalent spec computer off the shelf, and you'll then have someone around who knows your PC abd what you use it for.
posted by Devonian at 2:01 PM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's actually quite weird that desktops don't come with an SSD as default, when I think about it. It's a cheap and straightforward upgrade, but there we are.

I'd recommend it as a something that you could do without a huge amount of skill, or risk - just buy an SSD and follow the instructions in my link. Make sure you back up your files but you should be doing that anyway, shouldn't you.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:38 PM on February 1, 2016


If you don't want to spring for the money for a SSD, to avoid boot time, simply never, or almost never, reboot. My computers stay booted for weeks or months at a time unless a restart is required for updates. Instead of shutting down, put the computer in sleep or hibernate to reduce power to nearly zero. It will resume operation in a second or two, even faster than a SSD reboot.
posted by JackFlash at 5:13 PM on February 1, 2016


Best answer: My current laptop has JUST an SSD. My next desktop system is going to have at least a 1tb SSD, and probably more. This laptop is now four years old, and it's aged better than any other machine i've owned.

Buy the biggest SSD you can and try and put everything on it. Only use a hard drive for backups and media. Buy a bigger one than you'd possibly need for what you intend to use the system for.

The only things i store outside of the SSDs on the two systems i have are large media files. Even all my photos live on the SSD. My backup drive and NAS just have video/audio files.

Having just the OS on one is a big speed boost, but having everything feels awesome. It's seriously a game changer when huge programs like photoshop or ableton live open in literally one second.

I have utterly no interest in doing video or audio work without one storing all my work files ever again. Nothing in my long history of using computers has made as much of a difference as committing to that did. I would rather downgrade other options on the computer to get a bigger SSD than have a small one. Every time i have to use a SSD boot only or hard drive based machine for work i get cartoonishly frustrated.
posted by emptythought at 5:20 PM on February 1, 2016


Yes! SSD is definitely worth it. I cannot recommend a machine without one at this point (and haven't for a few years going). A SSD for your primary OS/programs drive, and a hard drive for the rest is a pretty good configuration.

You may not be able to find one like that at Best Buy, but on a site like Newegg.com, there are quite a few that fit the bill at or under your price range.

Here's the first one I found searching there briefly. It's got a 120 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD, and comes in at around $700.
posted by destructive cactus at 5:55 PM on February 1, 2016


SSDs are indeed the business, but if you own one, make sure you have an adequate backup process in place. When spinny disks die, they quite often do so in such a way that most of what's on them remains recoverable. When SSDs die, they die hard. On the upside, any given SSD is indeed less likely to die than a comparable spinny.

Even so, you want an external backup drive that's at least as big as the total capacity of everything that's internal to your PC, you want to keep that backup drive disconnected from your PC most of the time, and you want to be making regular backups onto it (Windows Backup is fine for this).

Having two such drives and updating your backups alternately is even safer - guards against the PC going nuts during a backup session and destroying absolutely everything. And having all of the above plus an Internet-based backup process using something like Crashplan is better still.
posted by flabdablet at 7:47 AM on February 2, 2016


Response by poster: If anyone is still out there...i5 or i7 processor? And what's the terminology that lets me know my hard drive from the laptop will have a bay to go into in the new desktop?
posted by agregoli at 12:04 PM on February 11, 2016


>i5 or i7 processor

Depends on the workload, but mostly an i5 will be plenty. If you think you'll need / use ~15% more power you can pay the premium for the i7.

>what's the terminology

A SATA drive almost certainly is in your laptop. You can check the specs of your laptop online to see exactly what type it is. An issue you might hit is that laptop drive can have a smaller form factor than is standard in a PC. You may need a cheap mounting bracket.
posted by anti social order at 2:23 PM on February 11, 2016


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