Is it worth upgrading to a 120 GB SSD on my laptop?

DeadlyTitan · June 13, 2018

So recently the 500 GB HDD in my laptop died so i was looking to replace it and then i came across the SSD's available for same price but much much lower capacity.

This is a 4 year old laptop with an i3-3217U (I guess) with 2 x 4 GB (8 GB) DDR3 ram, that i bought when i entered the university back then. Nowadays i just use it to read news/articles and watch some videos and maybe a quick editing of work related files if really needed and not much else. So do you think its worth going to a 120 GB SSD over 500 GB HDD? i dont want to spend too much on this as i already have my i7 8700k gaming rig with GTX 1080 Ti and 2 x 1 TB SSD's.

So yea my work on it is very minimal and limited. The thing is i am a data hog and i tend to gather soo much data over time that i have over 12 TB drives full of data. just backed up. My current gaming rig have around 6 TB Storage and 4 TB offline backup. I am a hobby game modder so there is a lot of data that i often back up and i dont usually uninstall games once installed cause i'll be working on modding multiple games and just leave them there.

The thing is i feel like if i go for the 120 GB SSD i might regret the lack of storage knowing me, but then the thought of having fast boot times and faster accessing times is very enticing. This question might sound too obvious but am only asking to help clear my mind.

One more thing, i have a few old games that i often play with my friends on lan that refuses to boot when on SSD so that's also a reason for backtracking.

Crunchy Dragon · June 13, 2018

120GB isn't gonna last too long.

I would look for a Crucial MX500 in the 256Gb flavor.

Ic3d · June 13, 2018

Depending on the laptop you may be able to fit a hard drive caddy where the disk drive (if you have one) goes. This means you could have a 1Tb HDD in one bay and even a 60Gb SSD in the other giving you the best of both worlds.

HDD caddy: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/9-5mm-SATA-2nd-Hard-Disk-Drive-HDD-SSD-Caddy-For-Apple-Macbook-Pro-iMac-Mac-Mini/132502728747?epid=25014804039&hash=item1ed9c7302b:g:fxYAAOSwB2NazGwO

porina · June 13, 2018

For responsiveness alone I'd say SSD, but if capacity is a concern a 240-256 GB class SSD isn't much more than a 120-128 GB class one. Price-per-capacity should get a bit better in that region.

Tsar_Maple · June 13, 2018

This laptop wouldn't happen to have a M.2 slot would it? Not sure if it's too old

If yes, Western Digital has a WD Blue M.2 250 GB for like 70-80 on Amazon. If you're just doing light work/reading on it, 250 should be more than adequate.

https://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-250GB-SSD-WDS250G1B0B/dp/B01LY154MY/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1528909171&sr=8-4-fkmr0&keywords=western+digital+black+m.2

DeadlyTitan · June 13, 2018

11 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

120GB isn't gonna last too long.

I would look for a Crucial MX500 in the 256Gb flavor.

Hmm, now that i think about it, with just 120 Gb i might end up killing that SSD faster than i can imagine with my constant read/writes. Well i dont really want to spend over $50 on this cause i have some other things on my wish list. This was just an unforeseen event

2 minutes ago, Ic3d said:

Depending on the laptop you may be able to fit a hard drive caddy where the disk drive (if you have one) goes. This means you could have a 1Tb HDD in one bay and even a 60Gb SSD in the other giving you the best of both worlds.

HDD caddy: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/9-5mm-SATA-2nd-Hard-Disk-Drive-HDD-SSD-Caddy-For-Apple-Macbook-Pro-iMac-Mac-Mini/132502728747?epid=25014804039&hash=item1ed9c7302b:g:fxYAAOSwB2NazGwO

Hmm, nice idea, i never thought about that. but then again i do not want to spend more than $50 on this thing for now.

1 minute ago, Tsar_Maple said:

This laptop wouldn't happen to have a M.2 slot would it? Not sure if it's too old

If yes, Western Digital has a WD Black M.2 256 GB for like 70-80 on Amazon. If you're just doing light work/reading on it, 256 should be more than adequate.

naa its just a cheap $350 laptop that i bought for my university back then, it does not come with that stuff ^^.

5 minutes ago, porina said:

For responsiveness alone I'd say SSD, but if capacity is a concern a 240-256 GB class SSD isn't much more than a 120-128 GB class one. Price-per-capacity should get a bit better in that region.

Ermm not exactly right for me, 240/256 GB SSD's costs twice as much as 120 GB SSD's here.

marten.aap2.0 · June 13, 2018

I only have a 120GB ssd in my laptop, I'm always removing files or programs to make enough space to use it, if you go for an ssd, go for at least 250GB.