Is it worth upgrading to an SSD?

eb123

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May 3, 2015
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Hey everyone,

Although this is quite a common topic in this section of the forum, I'm still not sure about how to go about the possibility of upgrading to an SSD for my laptop. The laptop itself is a 2-year old HP Q370CA and I want to hear your opinions about replacing its 2Tb HDD with a Samsung 850 Evo SSD (500GB).

Specs:
i7-4722HQ
16Gb RAM
gtx950m
2Tb HDD

I've also been experiencing some slow downs when browsing the web and using the computer in general so I'm not sure if those have to do with the hard drive or other components such as the CPU. Any help would be appreciated...
 
Solution
The speed difference between an HDD and an SSD is fantastic. It will cut your boot time by 9/10ths. But unless you game, or do really heavy-duty grinding (spread sheets, video editing, etc, that require a lot of disk access), the SSD won't do you much good. You already have plenty of RAM, so, if I were you, I'd just stick with the HDD. But de-frag it, shut off any programs that you don't want to start at start-up (https://www.windowscentral.com/how-control-apps-startup-windows-10), and make sure the programs that are running in the background (use Task Manager to see this: just right click on the task bar and select "Task Manager") are programs you actually want to be running.

Btw, a lot of anti-virus programs that run in the...

jdog2pt0

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May 28, 2009
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Slowdowns could be caused by fragmentation of the HDD (an easy enough, if not time consuming fix by simply running a defragging program and letting it do its thing), or even an excess of programs running in the background (maybe you've installed a lot of stuff overtime and it's just kinda creeping up on you). Couldn't hurt to, with some compressed air, blow out all the vents on your laptop to remove dust too. (Could also look into disabling "Superfetch" in your services (I hate superfetch with a passion), and disabling fast restart (if Win8/10) to ensure your computer is actually rebooting properly).

As for the SSD vs HDD. I've no experience with them, but I've heard the loading speeds between the two are night and day. Obviously, by switching to the smaller capacity drive you are giving up a substantial amount of space. If though, you don't see yourself utilizing all that space on the 2TB and believe the 500GB to be sufficient for your purposes, I do believe it will help. The nice thing is, if you need extra capacity for not super important stuff you can invest in a decent sized external USB HDD to make up the difference.
 

mazboy

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Dec 28, 2017
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The speed difference between an HDD and an SSD is fantastic. It will cut your boot time by 9/10ths. But unless you game, or do really heavy-duty grinding (spread sheets, video editing, etc, that require a lot of disk access), the SSD won't do you much good. You already have plenty of RAM, so, if I were you, I'd just stick with the HDD. But de-frag it, shut off any programs that you don't want to start at start-up (https://www.windowscentral.com/how-control-apps-startup-windows-10), and make sure the programs that are running in the background (use Task Manager to see this: just right click on the task bar and select "Task Manager") are programs you actually want to be running.

Btw, a lot of anti-virus programs that run in the background are speed killers. I use Windows Defender (built in to Win10) as my only anti-virus program, across all of my computers. It works great, gets updated frequently (in the background), and isn't a speed killer. With a little care with web browsing and file downloads, it's just as effective as any other anti-virus program.
 
Solution

marksavio

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Dec 23, 2017
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short answer yes. definitely get a SSD if you got extra cash with you. but this wont fix your current issue if the performance of your laptop isnt hard disk related.

have you tried doing disk defrags and disk health checks to confirm that?
have you tried running "sfc /scannow" on command line to check if your windows is as it should be?
have you tried downloading CCleaner and clean your registries?
have you tried changing your windows power plan to high performance?
have you updated all your drivers from your laptops website?
have you tried disabling some services on start up (press winkey+r. type "msconfig". services. hide all ms services. disable all. and enabling each service at a time per manufacturer at every restart to see which of them is causing the slow down)
or going to startup tab in msconfig and disabling some of them?
 

eb123

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May 3, 2015
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Thanks for your input guys. The laptop seems to be running okay for now but may purchase the SSD soon since you guys mentioned faster boot times and an overall much better experience.