Desktop hard disc upgrades

[Tim Hall]

My desktop currently has a 32GB SSD which the OS lives on and a 500GB spinning rust disc for data.  Important data is also backed up on an external spinning disc.

The internal spinning rust disc makes suspicious noises, so I'm thinking about replacing it. Another spinning rust one or an SSD? I can get WD Blue 500GB 3D NAND SSD a bit over fifty notes. 1TB seems to be a shade over a hundred.   Are there any variants of SSD that I should be aware of, or can I just do some stuff with G-Parted and then the data over? Any reason I should stay with spinning rust? They're a lot cheaper for more capacity.

[Canardly]

SSDs are a tad quicker and do not require defragging from time to time. They have now reached a price point occupied by HDDs not that long ago.

[Beardy]

When I saw the title I was trying to work out why a desk top would need disc brakes.  Once I realised which list it was in, my branes worked it out!

[Gattopardo]

When I saw the title I was trying to work out why a desk top would need disc brakes.  Once I realised which list it was in, my branes worked it out!

Make sure the mice limit the wheel speed.

[Kim]

When I saw the title I was trying to work out why a desk top would need disc brakes.  Once I realised which list it was in, my branes worked it out!

It's to make up for all those threads about disk brakes on bikes...

[Polar Bear]

SSD every time.

Stick to known brands and you should be fine.  If you don't recognise the brand I'd steer clear.

I have used Crucial for cheap and Samsung for expensive.  Both have proven to be 100% reliable thus far.

[Jurek]

My desktop currently has a 32GB SSD which the OS lives on and a 500GB spinning rust disc for data.  Important data is also backed up on an external spinning disc.

The internal spinning rust disc makes suspicious noises, so I'm thinking about replacing it. Another spinning rust one or an SSD? I can get WD Blue 500GB 3D NAND SSD a bit over fifty notes. 1TB seems to be a shade over a hundred.   Are there any variants of SSD that I should be aware of, or can I just do some stuff with G-Parted and then the data over? Any reason I should stay with spinning rust? They're a lot cheaper for more capacity.

SSD.
It's the way forward.
Avant, vorsprung and all that.
ETA - If you look elsewhere you'll see that I've just moved the entire contents of my 2015 iMac to a SSD.
Samsung.
~150 notes for 1Tb.

[ian]

I'd imagine the chips in SSDs come from the same collection of places, so really the only difference is the controller hardware, which I can't imagine makes a huge difference in practice.

Unless you need lots of space, SSD for speed these days. Spinny disk is fine for cost-effective back-up or data.

From the OS perspective, it's just a disk. The ins and outs are mostly handled by the hardware.

[fuaran]

From the OS perspective, it's just a disk. The ins and outs are mostly handled by the hardware.

There is TRIM, which helps to keep it working efficiently. But any modern OS should recognise the SSD, and enable TRIM as required, and disable any defragging.

[ian]

I think most modern OS should be optimized for SSD now, certainly, Macs are. Attempts to use anything else get your reported to the authorities in Cupertino for re-education.

The controller hardware does most of the heavy lifting in optimizing the read-write and garbage clean-up etc.

[rafletcher]

SSD every time.

Stick to known brands and you should be fine.  If you don't recognise the brand I'd steer clear.

I have used Crucial for cheap and Samsung for expensive.  Both have proven to be 100% reliable thus far.

We use Samsung T5’s at work.

[StuAff]

I think most modern OS should be optimized for SSD now, certainly, Macs are. Attempts to use anything else get your reported to the authorities in Cupertino for re-education.

The controller hardware does most of the heavy lifting in optimizing the read-write and garbage clean-up etc.

Though, to be fair, on the occasions I've booted macOS on HD in the past few years, it has been not too excruciating. Whereas Microsoft did something to Windows 10 that made it far, far slower than 8.1 and earlier versions on HD.

[CommuteTooFar]

Be careful buying the cheapest SSD drives.  Most controllers contain a dram cache as well as the flash this makes them much quicker.  The cheapest SSD drives omit the cache and as a result are much slower than most of the others.