I'd have to say that the single biggest boost to any computer with a traditional hard drive is upgrading to one of the new Solid State Drives. The performance enhancement is very noticeable from faster boot and shut down times to daily computer activities. And the technology and prices are improving every month. Whether you have an older unit that will soon need a hard drive or your looking at new computers, you need to consider a Solid State Drive.
So wear and tear is the number one cause of failure. Now think about the heating up and cooling down processes each time the computer is turned on and off. Hard drives have to spin up fast to allow you computer to boot up, often at 7200 rpm and even faster. This generates heat, lots of it. And when you constantly heat up and cool down metal parts, it causes some wear and tear each time it occurs.
These controllers can transfer up to 6 gigs per second rather than 3 gigs (or worse by many older hard drives). This is really due to a company called Sandforce came up with the new controller technology to go to SATA III specs of the 6 gigs per second transfer speed. Before they came up with this new methodology Intel was the leader at much slower transfer rates. So my best recommendation is that any SSD you choose to buy should have a Sandforce controller onboard to get the maximum speed out of any SSD.
Hard drive failures are going to occur, it's not if, it's when it will fail. So even if you have the best of luck, that hard drive will go sideways in three to five years based on the mean failure time. As mentioned above, you can do some things to help get the maximum life out of any hard drive by doing the basics. Keeping the computer well ventilated, in a safe location, using power suppressors, and reducing any possible risks.
So what kind of speeds can you expect from these new hot rod SSD devices? I do computer repair for a living and anytime a traditional hard drive fails I mention that they can go with a SSD replacement. I tell them you can get a good 7200 RPM SATA 500 gig hard drive for around $70. Or, you can get one of the new SSD 240 Gig drives for about $185. Depending on their computer (later models are necessary to handle the 6 Gig transfer rate), many go with the SSD after they hear about the actual increases in speed.
Just what kind of improvement can you get from an SSD versus a traditional hard drive? I've replaced the hard drives in both MacBooks and Windows laptop computers and the improvements are very similar. The original hard drives were 5400 RPM Fujitsu drives. Boot time on the Windows laptops went from about 48 seconds to 21 seconds. When you are sitting there waiting for your computer to boot, that's huge. How about copying files? Well, on about 11 gigs the difference was a little over one minute on the SSD and a little over five minutes on the traditional hard drive.And speaking of laptops, there are two other factors that come into play with the SSD replacement. They run silent and take far less energy. And on laptops that's a big deal since you want your battery to last as long as possible and less noise is always a good thing. So there is even more reasons to upgrade on a laptop model besides performance.
So wear and tear is the number one cause of failure. Now think about the heating up and cooling down processes each time the computer is turned on and off. Hard drives have to spin up fast to allow you computer to boot up, often at 7200 rpm and even faster. This generates heat, lots of it. And when you constantly heat up and cool down metal parts, it causes some wear and tear each time it occurs.
These controllers can transfer up to 6 gigs per second rather than 3 gigs (or worse by many older hard drives). This is really due to a company called Sandforce came up with the new controller technology to go to SATA III specs of the 6 gigs per second transfer speed. Before they came up with this new methodology Intel was the leader at much slower transfer rates. So my best recommendation is that any SSD you choose to buy should have a Sandforce controller onboard to get the maximum speed out of any SSD.
Hard drive failures are going to occur, it's not if, it's when it will fail. So even if you have the best of luck, that hard drive will go sideways in three to five years based on the mean failure time. As mentioned above, you can do some things to help get the maximum life out of any hard drive by doing the basics. Keeping the computer well ventilated, in a safe location, using power suppressors, and reducing any possible risks.
So what kind of speeds can you expect from these new hot rod SSD devices? I do computer repair for a living and anytime a traditional hard drive fails I mention that they can go with a SSD replacement. I tell them you can get a good 7200 RPM SATA 500 gig hard drive for around $70. Or, you can get one of the new SSD 240 Gig drives for about $185. Depending on their computer (later models are necessary to handle the 6 Gig transfer rate), many go with the SSD after they hear about the actual increases in speed.
Just what kind of improvement can you get from an SSD versus a traditional hard drive? I've replaced the hard drives in both MacBooks and Windows laptop computers and the improvements are very similar. The original hard drives were 5400 RPM Fujitsu drives. Boot time on the Windows laptops went from about 48 seconds to 21 seconds. When you are sitting there waiting for your computer to boot, that's huge. How about copying files? Well, on about 11 gigs the difference was a little over one minute on the SSD and a little over five minutes on the traditional hard drive.And speaking of laptops, there are two other factors that come into play with the SSD replacement. They run silent and take far less energy. And on laptops that's a big deal since you want your battery to last as long as possible and less noise is always a good thing. So there is even more reasons to upgrade on a laptop model besides performance.
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