I am seriously having second thoughts about buying an SSD. Try convince me that it's worth the investment?

[TheAndroidGuy]

So I have two 500gb HDD in my PC which is an HP ProDesk G1 SFF (i5 4570, 12gb of ram) so yeah. It does me well but is a bit slow at times but it's very minor. I do not game or anything so yeah. But is an SSD worth it? I am planning to get the 860 Evo 250gb for Windows and a few apps (Photoshop, InDesign, chrome, vlc media player and etc). Should I bother with an SSD? My boot bios time is 11seconds. Total boot time is 30 seconds. The 860 Evo SSD costs $115USD/$155NZD. Man I'm just so lost. Don't know if I feel like it's the right thing to do to buy an SSD. Try persuade me I guess or suggest any other drives? And before you suggest an 850 Evo the prices are the same give or take a couple of dollars.  Also is 250gb enough? I'm worried it won't be enough in the future. 

[cesarbg]

In my case, i have revived my two Macs using ssd, they are faster, and os will load in seconds.

I also have ssd on windows, and boot times are also couple of seconds.

Apps in both cases load instantaneously. I am a bit of a desperate person, so it worked for me.

[mintlou]

Boot time will be quicker, everything will load quicker. You can use that 500GB drive as a secondary option if that case allows it. 

[Vigilante505]

You're over thinking it. just do it if you can afford it.

[Kobathor]

If you have budget for a 500GB 860 EVO, I'd recommend that. I have 250GB, and it fills up pretty quickly if you install lots of programs on it.

And yes, I would recommend adding an SSD. It's not just boot times, it's everything. I can turn on my computer, log in to Windows, and immediately have a YouTube video open on Chrome before 30 seconds is up. Opening any application is super fast, especially for Adobe products, way faster than on an HDD.

[r2724r16]

Just about any ssd takes around 10 seconds or less to boot up. My applications open up quickly, and my life is better.

[WereCat]

SSD is not about boot times but about the responsiveness of the entire system. If you get SSD and you install OS and all programs on it, everything will be so much faster, you won't be ever wanting to go back to using HDD as the OS/applications go to drive.

[combine1237]

The time I saved in 1 year alone made the SSD worth it for me as those 10-30 seconds of waiting add up quickly. 

[NTDaws]

Overtime, when using a hard drive for the operating system. It slows down. And you will notice that on every system with just a hard drive. When you add the SSD it doesn't slow down the older it gets, but it stays young the less you write to the SSD.

[trekkie1701c]

Last time I had a hard drive as the boot drive, I actually set up my computer to automatically log itself in and start all it's programs, then lock the screen (so you still had to enter a password to use it) so that I could go off and use the restroom while I waited for it to boot.  I'd sometimes finish before it did, it was so slow - and the rest of the system wasn't too bad (i5 3570k OC'd@4.2ghz, 32GB of DDR3 RAM though I can't remember the speed).

 

The only system I currently use a hard drive for as the boot drive is my home server, and that's running the drives in RAID which provides some extra speed.  Still takes about 20-30 seconds to boot, however.  Also, it's slow enough that I've actually started using it as the main storage for my desktop and laptop, because it's slow enough that when doing network file transfers, it's the bottleneck.

 

Hard drives are pretty slow.

[leadeater]

Just get a small 120GB SSD for the OS and use the HDD for games and large programs?

[seagate_surfer]

If you're looking to increase performance a touch, but the cost of SSD is making you a little uneasy, particularly where capacity is also a priority for you, then another solution which could be a fit is an in-between, like an SSHD, or Solid-State Hybrid Drive (current Seagate branding: FireCuda). These drives have an SSD cache on which the drive intuitively places your most frequently accessed data for faster load-time performance, then also has a larger spinning storage capacity for the rest of your data. Also comes with a 5 year warranty, one of the only ways to get that without springing for enterprise/"Pro" level gear.


You did mention you don't really game, however the following charts may help you build a picture of how the drives stack up nonetheless:
 

The first one compares startup times across several popular games on a traditional spinning 7200 RPM HDD, our SSHD, and an M.2 SSD (128GB). The white is for SSD, the orange is for FireCuda, and the gray is for the 7200 spinning HDD.
 

Startup Times
 

The next one compares the first 3 days of gaming storage utilization across several popular titles, and SYSmark ratings from various drive types and combinations. First of the grays is 7200 RPM 1TB spinning HDD, second (lightest gray) is FireCuda, third (darkest gray) is an SSD + 7200 RPM HDD combo, purple is SSD + FireCuda combo, and lastly blue is SSD.
 

First 3 Days Gaming Storage Utilization

Good luck, regardless of which route you decide to go in the end.