Which SSD is good for me?

[Train27]

So I asked a question (succesfully answered btw) not even an hour ago, but another thing popped into my mind. However, as I think it's different enough and it might be interesting for other people to read, I decided to make it a separate question. As I said in the other post, I have a somewhat decent laptop (intel i7 4750hq, nvidia geforce gtx 950m, 8gb ddr 1600) but a kinda bad hard drive, and so I wanted to buy an SSD. However, I don't have a clue on which one should I buy.

 

I'm not really into hardcore gaming (the most demanding games I play are Alien: Isolation and Borderlands 2, both at full graphics) nor do I need to move extremely heavy workloads with some design program. I'm a computer engineering student so maybe that helps deciding which features are more suitable for me

The thing is, I'm currently running a dual-boot (Ubuntu 14.04 + Windows 10) which gives me a little bit of a headache from time to time... but anyway, the thing is, I have a portable WD 1TB hard drive, plus the 1TB hard drive that I'll get out from the laptop if I replace it, which makes it 2TB to save media, games and programs. But if I do save the programs there and use the SSD to store merely only the operating systems... wouldn't it run slowly anyway? Because it will be accessing to the programs from a USB 3.0 port.

 

Any ideas then? Should I buy like a ~120GB SSD and store there the os's and the most used programs only? Will the performance difference be worth the 60$+ price? And in such case, any concrete product suggestions?

 

Thanks beforehand ^^

[Castdeath97]

I would just get a 240GB SP550 if you don't bother with performance much (maybe a 240GB hyper X if you need more performance).

 

Also I would advice you to check if its possible to install the SSD in the CD/DVD drive place or if your laptop has another free 2.5" or even a M.2 slot for you to use so that you can keep the hard drive for mass storage.

[Moonzy]

yea the program will run slower or some might not run at all if you install it in an external drives

 

i recommend getting a 120gb SSD for your OS and softwares, and maybe 1 or 2 games if you can fit them in

and use a second hard drive (the 1tb) for videos and musics and what not, mass storage

 

there's a good chance your laptop has a cd/dvd reader, you can actually replace that with a hard drive with an adapter btw

so not necessarily connecting the 1tb drive externally

[Train27]

How about the speed? How much would be noticeable on the performance without being overexpensive? I actually don't know how many mb/s are acceptable for a SDD.

Thanks for your nice replay btw

[typographie]

1 hour ago, Train27 said:

How about the speed? How much would be noticeable on the performance without being overexpensive? I actually don't know how many mb/s are acceptable for a SDD.

Thanks for your nice replay btw

Honestly I think most mainstream, modern SSDs are going to be fast enough for your needs. The difference between those drives and the ultra expensive ones are not something you're likely to see and feel in typical usage anyway. Benchmarks will reveal those differences, but you aren't likely to notice otherwise.

 

Plus, a lot of these drives will come close to maxing out a SATA III port anyway—the real speed improvements are on PCIe and M.2 these days, which aren't likely to be options on a laptop anyway.

 

Basically, don't get too distracted by MB/s. It's often much more practical to focus on GB/$. If buying a slower SSD allows you to buy a bigger one, that's usually worthwhile. In my experience, SSDs are never as big as you'll wish they were.