m.2 laptop, want to use the expandable storage slot, ssd or hdd?

[davehkiin]

Hey Guys

 

Just got a new laptop, and without researching it much I thought it was a great laptop, I like it apart from the atrocious viewing angles of the display, in every other element it's perfect for my use

 

Ryzen 7 3700u

8GB Ram (Will be upgrading this)

m.2 512gb

 

So I decided to open it up and see what room I had for upgrading and saw that I have a 2.5 hdd/ssd slot, hence me coming here and asking for your opinions on this.

 

So I've been thinking about upgrading and I'm not sure what route I want to go, so wanted to hear if anyone here has had a similar experience and what route they have went, or if you were in this position what would you do.

 

Would you pick 1tb 5400 2.5 hdd? Or 480gb ssd?

 

I'm not really bothered about the price, it's just the internal justification of spending 2-2.5x more on an SSD for the same amount of storage

 

Will be using this laptop for a little bit of everything. LIght gaming when on the go, powerpoints for events, light video editing through premiere and using the Adobe suite of products and web development.

 

Thoughts?

[Mira Yurizaki]

If all you care about is storage space, get an HDD. If you care about shorter loading times, get an SSD.

[19_blackie_73]

hdd will shorten your battery life more than the ssd, but that also depends on how much space you need.

[davehkiin]

28 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

If all you care about is storage space, get an HDD. If you care about shorter loading times, get an SSD.

Sounds fair, I'm mostly in it for the storage gains, and the pricing difference is making me hesitant

 

23 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

hdd will shorten your battery life more than the ssd, but that also depends on how much space you need.

This is a very good point you raise actually, I should consider the potential battery drain especially over prolonged periods of time where I may not have access to an outlet

 

Are there any links / tests done on the difference of battery drain compared HDD vs SSD on the same laptop/setup? Be curious to see if this makes any real difference over sustained time. Especially if it only makes a difference when the drive has spun up for access. For example if I'm just using it as cold storage and accessing when I need will it be that significant? 

[Blatcher2]

It's a laptop, please don't get a HDD. 1TB sata SSD's are dropping below $80 so I would just get the SSD. 

[KarathKasun]

Cheap 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD for sure.

 

Battery life difference is real, in the 10%-20% range for the difference.

 

2.5" HDDs have horrible performance for what they cost now.

[thedangerine]

When I started college I got a laptop that had a 512gb ssd and a 2tb hard drive, it was great fast booting with mass storage still available. Then one day I dropped it at a weird angle, it caused no cosmetic damage but the hard drive died. After that it would take several minutes to boot because it would detect something connected but failed to be able to read it so it tried for several minutes before booting. I eventually removed it and then it booted dumb fast like it used to. I would recommend getting the ssd since its a laptop just for the resilience and reliability. You can always get an external drive if you really need that space. Personally I never use mechanical storage inside a laptop because it is more likely to fail

 

tl;dr

get the ssd imo

[Mira Yurizaki]

28 minutes ago, davehkiin said:

This is a very good point you raise actually, I should consider the potential battery drain especially over prolonged periods of time where I may not have access to an outlet

 

Are there any links / tests done on the difference of battery drain compared HDD vs SSD on the same laptop/setup? Be curious to see if this makes any real difference over sustained time. Especially if it only makes a difference when the drive has spun up for access. For example if I'm just using it as cold storage and accessing when I need will it be that significant? 

Basically it's a moot point: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/notebook-battery-life-storage,5152.html

 

The thing of note is that the system may not be pinging storage all the time. The shortened battery life may make sense if you're constantly hitting storage, but not if it's being accessed once in a while. If all you're doing while on the battery is browsing the internet or streaming videos, storage drives aren't really much of a factor. The only real hit to battery life is from the increased loading time for applications.

 

EDIT: I was reading the wrong page. Scratch what I said.

[19_blackie_73]

37 minutes ago, davehkiin said:

Sounds fair, I'm mostly in it for the storage gains, and the pricing difference is making me hesitant

 

This is a very good point you raise actually, I should consider the potential battery drain especially over prolonged periods of time where I may not have access to an outlet

 

Are there any links / tests done on the difference of battery drain compared HDD vs SSD on the same laptop/setup? Be curious to see if this makes any real difference over sustained time. Especially if it only makes a difference when the drive has spun up for access. For example if I'm just using it as cold storage and accessing when I need will it be that significant? 

I did it with my old laptop, swapping from hdd to ssd, battery life went up like 1,5x to 2x, somewhere in that range

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Your M.2 drive is already very large, which realistically means you won't need to squeeze every MB of your 2.5'' slot. That would make me lean towards SSD: more than speed, more than battery, it's the survivability inside a laptop, especially if you carry it around a lot rather than using it as desktop replacement. I'd dare to say that for SATA 2.5'' SSDs you won't even pay that much of a premium compared to HDDs (but of course you'll pay some).

[davehkiin]

2 hours ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

I did it with my old laptop, swapping from hdd to ssd, battery life went up like 1,5x to 2x, somewhere in that range

That's genuinely impressive

2 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Your M.2 drive is already very large, which realistically means you won't need to squeeze every MB of your 2.5'' slot. That would make me lean towards SSD: more than speed, more than battery, it's the survivability inside a laptop, especially if you carry it around a lot rather than using it as desktop replacement. I'd dare to say that for SATA 2.5'' SSDs you won't even pay that much of a premium compared to HDDs (but of course you'll pay some).

Yeah, it's kind of big - and you're right I'm toting it around more than I'm using it as a desktop replacement, more as a supplement to what I might do on a daily basis.

 

I think from the discussions in this thread, SSD is definitely the way forward. Now to decide on a size I think. I will try and pick a best answer from your replies unless anyone has anything further to add to the conversation