SSD upgrades....

[Joes Place]

Just finished upgrading my work laptop and main desktop with 1TB SSDs.

Laptop could only use the SATA III interface, but the desktop has the M2 socket on the motherboard.
Holy crap - very easy to do, and the speed difference for bootups and system updates is crazy fast.

I'd recommend Crucial, as they have a really good site that you can look up your system for compatible components (you can buy the SSD elsewhere if the price is better), and the 3rd party software they have for cloning is uber-easy to use. If you don't use a Crucial drive, the software will not load unless you buy it. Cloning requires an hour or so of downtime, but then you just unplug or remove the old drive (or you can change the BIOS on the boot order, but Crucial automatically did that for me).

Biggest gain was for the laptop, that had a slow 5400 rpm drive in it, and any Windows updates were simply horrible. You can find lots of good system deals that come with slower drives (5400 or 7200) and a $50-100 SSD DIY upgrade is often cheaper than buying the systems with the SSDs installed - many of them have fairly small SSDs, and to make syncing easiest with my NAS, I wanted everything to have the same 1TB drive size here. NAS is still populated with slow 7200 rpm drives, but I never "see" those slower speeds. Bootups and system updates are where those SSDs really shine.

 

[jamesvanderwulf]

I just pulled out of OP's mother's board socket. Room for the 3rd party now with the smaller SSds...

 

[Hawki97]

Just finished upgrading my work laptop and main desktop with 1TB SSDs.

Laptop could only use the SATA III interface, but the desktop has the M2 socket on the motherboard.
Holy crap - very easy to do, and the speed difference for bootups and system updates is crazy fast.

I'd recommend Crucial, as they have a really good site that you can look up your system for compatible components (you can buy the SSD elsewhere if the price is better), and the 3rd party software they have for cloning is uber-easy to use. If you don't use a Crucial drive, the software will not load unless you buy it. Cloning requires an hour or so of downtime, but then you just unplug or remove the old drive (or you can change the BIOS on the boot order, but Crucial automatically did that for me).

Biggest gain was for the laptop, that had a slow 5400 rpm drive in it, and any Windows updates were simply horrible. You can find lots of good system deals that come with slower drives (5400 or 7200) and a $50-100 SSD DIY upgrade is often cheaper than buying the systems with the SSDs installed - many of them have fairly small SSDs, and to make syncing easiest with my NAS, I wanted everything to have the same 1TB drive size here. NAS is still populated with slow 7200 rpm drives, but I never "see" those slower speeds. Bootups and system updates are where those SSDs really shine.

What took you so long man?! SSD has been affordable for a while and it's the only way to go...

 

[Joes Place]

What took you so long man?!

Laziness.

And taking time to learn the basics.

Taking apart laptops is a little challenging to Google up the right model info. That swapout took much longer than the M2 card.

And I'd never looked into the M2 memory cards (until I learned about those, and identified I did have that slot on the desktop, I would've gone with a SATA replacement that was 4x slower)
Only hitch on the M2, was that the MB didn't have a screw to mount the card in, so I had to fish around the machine screws stash to find one that matched the threads. Otherwise, it was more Googling to identify what the thread pitch and size was, and make a hardware store run.
That would have been something I should have checked beforehand, so now I know, and now you know!!!

Got the SATAIII laptop drive for $85; M2 card for $100.

Main desktop is the HP 137c model from Costco with the Ryzen 7 1700 chip (2 yrs or so ago); so, w/ the SSD, the total investment ends up at about $600. Buying a comparable system today with a comparable processor and SSD would easily run $900-1000. Doesn't have a "great" video card, but it does what I need it to do. Plus, it makes zero noise now aside from bootup fans.

 

[Joes Place]

What took you so long man?! SSD has been affordable for a while and it's the only way to go...

Oh, and when I purchased that laptop a few years back, SSDs were nowhere near as affordable. <$100 for a 1 TB SSD is indeed tough to beat now. Totally makes sense to find less expensive systems they cut costs on cheap 5400 or 7200 rpm HDs and just buy your own SSD to upgrade - many of those systems aren't selling well because of the crappy drives, so they sell them for a pittance. Same with memory upgrades, which are much easier than drive cloning/swapouts.

I have no need for any more upgrades at this point - my laptop is just the backup system for onsite work, and the glacially slow HD was a big motivator for that upgrade, as any time Windows decided to run an update I could literally wait 20-30 minutes for it to finish.

I just rebooted my R7 desktop system from a Windows Update and it was ready to go in <60 seconds.

 

[Funky Bunch]

What kind of poor doesn't do the SSD upgrade by buying a new laptop?

 

[andrewrayhons]

Did you get the NVME M.2 or just Sata 3? There is a huge difference.

 

[Joes Place]

What kind of poor doesn't do the SSD upgrade by buying a new laptop?

Someone that has a laptop that's got an adequate chipset speed, who'd rather burn $100 on the upgrade than tossing a functional laptop into a landfill.

I kept my old 1st gen Core i7 system for almost 10 years. It would still perform on-par with a current i3 or i5 chip today; but 10 years is about as far as I want to stretch the limits on system reliability. I'll do the same with that laptop when it gets 7-10 yrs old.

 

[Joes Place]

Did you get the NVME M.2 or just Sata 3? There is a huge difference.

M.2 on the desktop. Laptop didn't have that option.

And, yes, it is about a 4x disk access speed difference.
This video really illustrates the upgrade speeds: M.2, SSD, 7200HD, 5400HD

 

[andrewrayhons]

There are two types of M.2, NVME and SSD. The M.2 SSD is the exact same speed as a regular SSD drive.

You have to specifically get a M.2 NVME drive for it to run at the faster speeds.

 

[Joes Place]

There are two types of M.2, NVME and SSD. The M.2 SSD is the exact same speed as a regular SSD drive.

You have to specifically get a M.2 NVME drive for it to run at the faster speeds.

Desktop M.2 is the NVME. I'm not savvy on all the techie terms, but I do review the specs.

2000 vs. ~500 MBps for the SATA type

 

[andrewrayhons]

For example, this is a M.2 drive, but just the same speed as a regular Sata 3 drive:
https://www.newegg.com/kingston-a400-120gb/p/N82E16820242474

This is a NVME drive:
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-500gb/p/N82E16820147690

The difference in speeds is actually about 7x faster.