Considering getting a new hard drive

My PC is feeling sluggish, the hard drive seems to be working a lot. I'm wondering if I got a SSD and installed windows from scratch on there if that would help. So my questions are:

I had windows 7 and got the upgrade to windows 10, would I have to go through 7 to 10 again? Can I install windows 10 straight?
What SSD would you recommend?
Would I need any special connections?
Anything else I should know?

You can get a new hardrive and just download the Win10 installer and let it rip. Ive done it on 3 different pc's that had Wind10 on so it works. Make sure you download the correct or same version of Windows 10 you have installed now.

You dont really have to get a new HDD or SSD if you think that will speed up your current installation. By formatting and reinstalling from scratch you will be surprised to see how much faster your pc is.

Naturally a SSD will be so much faster than normal HDD. IF you do get a SSD then use this for Windows installation files and smaller app install only. Installing games on is not advisable.

czc said:

My PC is feeling sluggish, the hard drive seems to be working a lot. I'm wondering if I got a SSD and installed windows from scratch on there if that would help. So my questions are:

I had windows 7 and got the upgrade to windows 10, would I have to go through 7 to 10 again? Can I install windows 10 straight?
What SSD would you recommend?
Would I need any special connections?
Anything else I should know?

Click to expand...

will boot windows quicker, definitely noticeable difference.

win 10 uses unique Hardware ID (usually in motherboard) to identify your machine for purposes of activation. So when you reinstall it just let it go online (can take a few days, mine had me worried as i also did free 8 - 10, and then format/reinstall and for a 2 days said i need to buy it) and it will eventually activate itself (you do get the option on the win 10 install setup to just not enter a product key at this time.)

once you go ssd, youll never go back.

Some tips tho, its a good idea to put your user folder (downloads/documents/vids/music) on another drive, so you dont waste the precious ssd space and read/write on things that get no benefit from speed.

You also wanna keep in mind that once over +-75% full an ssd's performance does tend to falter a bit, so try not have it too full. I find my 256gb with windows 10, csgo and 2 other games at a time (along with standard program's like office etc) reaches around there.

czc said:

What SSD would you recommend?

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Brand recommendations, I would go Samsung > Intel/Corsair/Adata > Kingston/Transcend/Patriot/Galax/Everything else. If you are going for 128Gb's then OS and a few apps are fine, maybe a game. 265Gb+ You can put a few of your most played games on. 512GB+ Would be like a standard 500GB plate drive.

Speed wise, most SSD's are going to be 350-500Mb/s however this depends on your SATA ports speeds. However even a average speed SSD is faster than a plate hard drive.

Samsung 250Gb EVO750 R1700~

Adata Premier SP580 240Gb R1300~

Adata SU800 512Gb R2700~

Corsair LE 240GB R1700~

Corsair LE 480Gb R2600~

Intel 540S 240Gb R1800~

Intel 540S 240Gb R1800~

czc said:

Would I need any special connections?

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No, standard 2.5" SSD's use the standard SATA connections. Unless you wish to use a M.2 Drive which needs a special port on your motherboard or a NVMe card.

czc said:

Anything else I should know?

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They are electrical products and just like plate drives capable of failing one day into use or 10 years into use. Having said that...

You'll find most SSD's have a 3 year warranty, where the faster models have a 5 year warranty.
Look at the MTBF (Mean time Between Failures) the average is around 1.5 millions hours, while some brands have it at 1 million.

A SSD does have a limited read/write cycle life, but it will probably outlive other components on PC before it needs replacing.

Disable Windows recovery to save space. Also try to keep it around 70-75% full, filling it up to maximum tends to slow it down slightly. Don't defrag it, that will cause unnecessary amount of writes which won't help with speed.

Wurnman said:

Installing games on is not advisable.

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Care to elaborate on that? I would rather install games on a SSD before install something like Handbrake or uTorrent which will do way more reads/writes than a game.

You have a 256GB SSD and your game is a 25GB download, for one game. It's a waste of time as the loading time for games on normal HDD is not that slow. It's better to install your games on a seperate HDD such as a 1TB etc...

IF you only install one game then yes, go for it.

Glordit said:

Brand recommendations, I would go Samsung > Intel/Corsair/Adata > Kingston/Transcend/Patriot/Galax/Everything else. If you are going for 128Gb's then OS and a few apps are fine, maybe a game. 265Gb+ You can put a few of your most played games on. 512GB+ Would be like a standard 500GB plate drive.

Speed wise, most SSD's are going to be 350-500Mb/s however this depends on your SATA ports speeds. However even a average speed SSD is faster than a plate hard drive.

Samsung 250Gb EVO750 R1700~

Adata Premier SP580 240Gb R1300~

Adata SU800 512Gb R2700~

Corsair LE 240GB R1700~

Corsair LE 480Gb R2600~

Intel 540S 240Gb R1800~

Intel 540S 240Gb R1800~



No, standard 2.5" SSD's use the standard SATA connections. Unless you wish to use a M.2 Drive which needs a special port on your motherboard or a NVMe card.



They are electrical products and just like plate drives capable of failing one day into use or 10 years into use. Having said that...

You'll find most SSD's have a 3 year warranty, where the faster models have a 5 year warranty.
Look at the MTBF (Mean time Between Failures) the average is around 1.5 millions hours, while some brands have it at 1 million.

A SSD does have a limited read/write cycle life, but it will probably outlive other components on PC before it needs replacing.

Disable Windows recovery to save space. Also try to keep it around 70-75% full, filling it up to maximum tends to slow it down slightly. Don't defrag it, that will cause unnecessary amount of writes which won't help with speed.


Care to elaborate on that? I would rather install games on a SSD before install something like Handbrake or uTorrent which will do way more reads/writes than a game.

Click to expand...

Wurnman said:

You have a 256GB SSD and your game is a 25GB download, for one game. It's a waste of time as the loading time for games on normal HDD is not that slow. It's better to install your games on a seperate HDD such as a 1TB etc...

IF you only install one game then yes, go for it.

Click to expand...

You clearly haven't played ARK, BF3/4 or CSGO.... loading times are SIGNIFICANTLY improved when they're installed on an ssd...I'm sure there are many other games too.

It's definitely better to install the slower things on an ssd...but games? Sure not ALL games, but definnitely your most played games should go on an ssd...

czc said:

My PC is feeling sluggish, the hard drive seems to be working a lot. I'm wondering if I got a SSD and installed windows from scratch on there if that would help. So my questions are:

I had windows 7 and got the upgrade to windows 10, would I have to go through 7 to 10 again? Can I install windows 10 straight?

Click to expand...

Download the Win 10 ISO and install from there. If it asks for a key, use your Win 7 key. When you ungraded, the key carried over to Win 10. If you get any issues with Win 10 not activating, contact the MS online support. They'll sort you out chop-chop.

What SSD would you recommend?

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Samsung. 750, 850, doesn't matter. If you don't like Samsung, at least get a known brand. Secondly, I would recommend at east 250Gb. In theory 120Gb should be ok but it depends on what you install. Most Microsoft products (and some software from other companies) dump a lot of files on C even if you specify D as the main installation drive. I have a 120Gb Samsung 840 EVO and I am now in a situation where diskspace is running low so I'll have to upgrade to a larger drive soon.

Would I need any special connections?

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Not if you buy a SATA disk.

Anything else I should know?

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Yes.
1. If you go Samsung, install the Magician software (or whatever it is called now) that comes with the drive. It handles all the settings Windows settings for you and gives a nice interface to check your drive health and tweak stuff.
2. Think before you install. Unless a game has huge level load times, it won't get a performance boost from an SSD. So dump those on your mechanical HDD. Ditto movies and series. And change your windows settings so that Documents, Pictures etc all point to locations on D.

Edit: I see everything in here has already been said, but I took the time to type this, so I'm going to post it, dammit.

Mister 44 said:

Samsung. 750, 850, doesn't matter. If you don't like Samsung, at least get a known brand. Secondly, I would recommend at east 250Gb. In theory 120Gb should be ok but it depends on what you install. Most Microsoft products (and some software from other companies) dump a lot of files on C even if you specify D as the main installation drive. I have a 120Gb Samsung 840 EVO and I am now in a situation where diskspace is running low so I'll have to upgrade to a larger drive soon.

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I agree with drive sizes, I would only go for 240/256Gb+

I have ARK, ive played BF3 and i even play Star Citizen and the wait is not that long dude. It's mental to install so many games on your OS SSD... But hey each to his own.

mottamort said:

You clearly haven't played ARK, BF3/4 or CSGO.... loading times are SIGNIFICANTLY improved when they're installed on an ssd...I'm sure there are many other games too.

It's definitely better to install the slower things on an ssd...but games? Sure not ALL games, but definnitely your most played games should go on an ssd...

Click to expand...

czc said:

My PC is feeling sluggish, the hard drive seems to be working a lot. I'm wondering if I got a SSD and installed windows from scratch on there if that would help. So my questions are:

I had windows 7 and got the upgrade to windows 10, would I have to go through 7 to 10 again? Can I install windows 10 straight?
What SSD would you recommend?
Would I need any special connections?
Anything else I should know?

Click to expand...

Most things have been said already, as [MENTION=11450]Mister 44[/MENTION] said get the Win10 ISO from the MS website. The best way to install is to put it onto a flash drive and install, it goes so damn quick; even more so if you have USB3 and a USB3 flash stick.

Hopefully you have a new(ish) system with Sata 6Gbps ports, because you'd want to use that and not Sata 3Gbps. If your motherboard does have the port, you can look into an M.2 SSD. They are much, much faster than Sata SSD's, however they are also a bit more pricey.

Wurnman said:

I have ARK, ive played BF3 and i even play Star Citizen and the wait is not that long dude. It's mental to install so many games on your OS SSD... But hey each to his own.

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I put my BF3 install on my SSD (moved it off when I stopped playing) and the load times were noticably faster. I agree that games take up a lot of space and fill your SSD fast, that is why I only put games I currently play on my SSD, and only if they have longer load times (I never fill my SSD up past 75%).

Blazzok said:

I put my BF3 install on my SSD (moved it off when I stopped playing) and the load times were noticably faster. I agree that games take up a lot of space and fill your SSD fast, that is why I only put games I currently play on my SSD, and only if they have longer load times (I never fill my SSD up past 75%).

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I do the same, I put my current game on the SSD, aka D3 is basically always on the SSD. I only have a 128gig SSD, run windows on it and D3. If I play something new, it depends on the game, most of the time I dont bother adding it to the SSD.

I also have all my user folders on a seperate drive - so pictures, downloads, document, music is all on a different drive.

Honestly guys, it only really speed up load times, not make the game play faster or even look better. Load times,the last thing i worry about launching a game.

Wurnman said:

Honestly guys, it only really speed up load times, not make the game play faster or even look better. Load times,the last thing i worry about launching a game.

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For D3, ironically I cannot play it if its not on the SSD. This is a fact, my game wont load in and I get all kinds of random errors. When its on the SSD I can load into the game and all the loading scenes without an issue.

That is strange. As i have said installing certain game(s) on SSD is not wrong, just not something i would recommend.

Wurnman said:

That is strange. As i have said installing certain game(s) on SSD is not wrong, just not something i would recommend.

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I literally use about 60% maz of my SSD, but when I recently reinstalled windows - I formatted the SSD to get rid of old gfx drivers that caused windows to crash.

Then installed battlenet on my other drive, installed D3 there, and I would get a weird error loading into the game which was one of te direct x drivers giving issues. We reinstalled it all, still the loading issues. I tried all the obscure fixed that blizzard offered. Nothing worked. Out of frustration I moved D3 to the SSD. Now its working. . . .

Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I'll start saving for a higher capacity ssd. My steam drive only has 24gb left and my main drive has 60gb left so I'll probably also get an extra mechanical drive.

Wurnman said:

Honestly guys, it only really speed up load times, not make the game play faster or even look better. Load times,the last thing i worry about launching a game.

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Noone said it does. But load times can be very annoying, especially when its the game you play all the time.

Again, noone has said to put ALL your games on your ssd, and noone has said that it boosts gaming performance.

You said he shouldn't put any games on his ssd as its "not advisable" and have yet to give a reason to support that other than it makes little to no difference (i don't notice load times) etc.

mottamort said:

Noone said it does. But load times can be very annoying, especially when its the game you play all the time.

Again, noone has said to put ALL your games on your ssd, and noone has said that it boosts gaming performance.

You said he shouldn't put any games on his ssd as its "not advisable" and have yet to give a reason to support that other than it makes little to no difference (i don't notice load times) etc.

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Ha, I know when I was still playing battlefield that the guys who had ssds loaded into the game way faster than me.