SSD or HDD?

[jakejumpman]

I'm getting to build a new pc for my grandad, and i'm unsure whether to get a 64gb ssd or 500gb hdd. He uses practically no hard drive space currently, and all he will use it for it surfing the internet, and emails. It will have windows 7 on it, if that matters. Thanks.

 

[andystanley]

Windows 7 will take about 20gb after doing some tweaks(iniatally is 30gb). As long as grandpappy doesn't use over 45gb he will loooove the speed of a SSD. Super snappy.
I'll see if I can find the link to how to get windows to 20gb. Fairly simple just deleting a few large useless files.
can you check grandpappy's current HDD and see if he's 65gb+? If he is under go for dat speeed! If not go for a 250gb HDD
Hope I helped. Lemme know if there's anything else I can help with.

 

[andystanley]

If you do get a ssd...get a crucial m4. One of,if not the best.

 

[jakejumpman]

His was a 60gb i think, and he still had like almost 40gb free

 

[jitpublisher]

1 60 gig SSD is not enough room for modern PC. If you only want to put an SSD in the system, you need to get a 120 gig one. A 60 gig is large enough just for the OS if you include a secondary HDD for storage and data, and most of your programs.

 

[terryd75]

I'm getting to build a new pc for my grandad, and i'm unsure whether to get a 64gb ssd or 500gb hdd. He uses practically no hard drive space currently, and all he will use it for it surfing the internet, and emails. It will have windows 7 on it, if that matters. Thanks.

Definitely! Get the SSD. If he needsstorage space later, a traditional hdd can be added at any time.

 

[andystanley]

His was a 60gb i think, and he still had like almost 40gb free

I would say go for the 64gb crucial m4.
As jitpublisher said it's not enough for a "modern" pc. Which I agree with but older people rarely download anything. 44gb will be plenty for grandpa's needs. Worse case scenario is he runs out of space and you can buy another.

Another option as jitpublisher said,is to have an ssd for windows and commonly used programs and a larger HDD for storage.
But as I said I doubt grandpa will go over 64gb.

 

[akamrcrack]

If you are going to get a small SSD. I say get a SSD cache drive like I use for my system.

I recently purchased a Crucial Adrenaline for $100 to run with my Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD. Here is what my HDD's speeds are now after using the dataplex software.

Compare that to my Intel 320 series SSD 120GB and they are almost equal in performance now

here is my Crucial M4 as well

I had my OS on my Crucial M4 for awhile (took up 15GB of space) and decided to install my OS onto my HDD because I have many files on my HDD that I would have liked to see sped up by the Crucial Adrenaline which it did with flying colors.

Basically my HDD went from a sata II slowpoke to a sata II fully saturated SSD with no hassle.

Where I am getting at is that you can wait to get an actual SSD (one with lots of storage) versus getting a smaller one now and at the same time you will definately speed up your HDD.

 

[BuBzXXL]

Just get him like a 90GB SSD.. Since I doubt he'd be downloading a bunch of stuff

 

[Pyree]

Get HDD.

Your grandad is probably not a power user or a gamer and he will appreciates the space he can use to store photo, music and video than the fast boot time, and fast application and game load time.

Also consider the hybrid drives.

 

[akamrcrack]

Get HDD.

Your grandad is probably not a power user or a gamer and he will appreciates the space he can use to store photo, music and video than the fast boot time, and fast application and game load time.

Also consider the hybrid drives.

A HDD + SSD cache setup would probably be his best scenarior in terms of quality computer use.

Gives him the proper amount of space to store, and the proper speeds to feel like he isn't racing to either die or watch OS load (which is how I feel every time I had a OS on my HDD. That has changed since I spent $100 on a Crucial Adrenaline to boost my HDD.)

A SSD would be nice if he knew exactly what to do with it, so a SSD cache makes more sense imo since it delivers wanted speed to the HDD and all of the files on it versus having to decide what programs to put on what which can be daunting if you aren't keen on the software you are using.

I like to look at it as so, I would rather spend my days trying to find more stuff to do rather than spend my days waiting to do stuff. I know some older people like to use the excuse "I don't mind the wait, gives me a chance to do something around the house." Which is fine but for people like my grandma that is a power user even tho she only does a small amount on the pc it takes her longer to let the pc load than it does to get what she needs done.

Normally I would suggest a 120GB SSD and a 500-1TB HDD but as of lately I have been trying to introduce people to SSD caching which is a very great thing to have for mechanical storage drives.

The momentus xt is comparable but I see that the HDD + SSD cache is faster and the SSD cache benifits the HDD more than what the momentus xt's hybrid ssd does. (mainly due to the size of the SSD in both configurations with the momentus XT only having 4gb/8gb of ssd cache versus 50GB of SSD cache plus very easy to setup software that does all the work)

Also if you look at my previous post you will see that the HDD+Adrenaline cache is performing equal to an Intel 320 series SSD which fully saturates its SATA II connection. Compare that to a momentus xt 500gb and you start to see the performance gap between the HDD+SSD cache versus HDD hybrid.

Food for thought

 

[akamrcrack]

To add to what I was saying, here goes a great comparison of the performance delivered from the HDD + SSD cache setup versus a Hybrid HDD.

If you remember how my HDD+SSD performed equally to a Intel 320 series 120GB SSD, this will shine some light into what that means for the performance of the momentus xt and the new Velociraptor $300 1TB hdd