Solid State Drive! A new type of hard drive for both laptops and desktops!
There is one computer upgrade that makes a huge difference in performance on computers, both new and old! You might think that your new computer is fast, but this upgrade will make it even faster! It's also a great upgrade for an older system. It is called a Solid State Drive (SSD)!
It is a replacement for your hard drive that you currently have in your computer.
You can think of it much in the same way as a flash drive or jump drive that you use to make your data portable. The great part about an SSD is that there are no moving parts in it. The memory chips in them make reading your data and writing data very quick. My experience is that it takes startup times from 45 seconds or even multi-minute down to about 15 seconds in most cases! It also makes opening applications significantly faster, even those large and slow to launch applications!
For reference, traditional hard drives like the one you probably have in your computer currently, having moving parts. They having spinning platters in them and a head that moves across them to read the data. The best analogy to me for this is a record player. The reason these are slower is that they have to wait for the platter to spin around to the exact locations that the data is written, and also wait for the the head to line up just where it needs to be.
Prices for one depends on the amount of storage size that you would need. The good news is that prices are much cheaper than they were a couple of years ago. You can get one that is probably large enough for most people's needs starting around $60. They also can be used in conjunction with a traditional hard drive in a desktop computer, if you need more data storage (you have both in your computer and setup your SSD with your operating system and programs while using the older hard drive for data files such as music, documents, etc).
One other advantage is their use in laptops. This is because laptops, by nature, are portable and get moved while they are being used (even just from typing on it while it is setting on your lap!). This causes a lot of wear and tear on a spinning drive where they may get moved while reading or writing data. Since the SSD has no moving parts, you don't have to worry about this!
While the physical installation of these is normally fairly easy, they do require reinstalling your operating system and applications. It may also be possible to migrate from your current setup with an imaging software package. My recommendation is that it is a great time to start fresh, make sure everything is patched and updated, and only install the items that you need.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss upgrading your system, please get in touch with me!
