▷ Change hard drive for an ssd, is it recommended?

Differences between hard drives and SSD

Traditional hard drives are made up of a rotating disk and a movable read / write head. Solid state drives, on the other hand, use microchips to store data, just like portable USB flash drives. Thus, they have no moving parts, and are much quieter, more durable, and faster than normal units.

Speed is your biggest advantage. Not only do they have much faster read times since there is no moving head, but they also start faster because they don't need to rotate. Also, since the physical location of the data doesn't matter on the SSDs, read speeds are consistent no matter where your data is stored, and disk fragmentation isn't really an issue.

SSDs have no moving parts, making them immune to shocks that can damage hard drives, when laptops are hit or even fall. They also consume less power, which prolongs the life of the battery. This last point is especially important for users who need to spend a lot of time away from plugs.

However, SSDs are still much more expensive than HDDs for the same amount of storage. In the past SSDs were also prone to failure, although this has already been reversed today and they are more reliable than hard drives.

How to install an SSD

In principle, SSDs are very easy to install, since you only have to follow a series of very simple steps:

First, connect the SSD to your PC using an internal Sata cable, an eSATA cable, a USB port, or an external caddy. This way you are ready to start writing data to it.

Clone the current hard drive to the SSD, then disconnect it from the computer (the old hard drive). There are plenty of disk cloning software on the market. Some disc manufacturers offer free software with their drives, and some vendors sell cloning kits. However, many backup programs will do the job, including Acronis True Image, EaseUS To Do, and CloneZilla. The thing to remember is that you should make a disk-to-disk copy, not just copy the Windows partition. It's also a good idea to make a Windows Startup / Repair DVD in case something goes wrong. For cloning to work, the SSD must be larger than the HDD's content, otherwise the data will not fit. One solution would be to delete the unnecessary data to be able to clone the HDD to a 120GB or 240GB SSD

If you have cloned the hard drive to the new SSD by connecting the latter externally, you only have to connect your new SSD to the motherboard so that your new PC uses it as main storage.

In the case of a laptop, close it and remove the battery. Unscrew the back of the cover and swap the SSD for the hard drive. This process may be different depending on your laptop, consult the manual or the Internet to find out the exact procedure for your model.

Exchange hard drive for an SSD Is it worth it?

As soon as you boot your PC from the new SSD you will notice an incredible increase in speed, everything will simply work faster, from the start of Windows to loading Chrome or Photoshop. In the case of video games you will also see how the loading screens are shortened, although once inside the game the performance will be the same.

Currently it is possible to buy a 240 GB SSD for less than 45 euros, or you can even find 480 GB models on offer for less than 80 euros. These prices are much lower than last year, so there are fewer and fewer excuses to avoid using an SSD. A great ideal is to combine an SSD with an HDD on the same desktop, or even on some laptops it is possible. In this way you can put the operating system and programs on the SSD, and on the other hand you can put your entire library of music, videos or even very heavy games on the HDD. In this way you will get the best balance between speed and storage capacity, without the cost skyrocketing.

We recommend reading the best SSDs on the market and SSD vs HDD.

This ends our article on swapping a hard drive for an SSD. You can leave a comment if you have any suggestion.