So it’s finally that time: you want to upgrade your older computer that came with a hard drive (HDD), or maybe you’ve been using HDDs to store your games or other material and you need more speed. What are the best options? HDDs still have their place in the market - they offer the most capacity for the money and use a compatible standard. So under what conditions is an SSD the better choice? That differs from user to user and from system to system, but there are some basic guidelines to help you make the call.
SSDs simply offer a much better experience when used as your main drive - this means the drive on which your OS resides. This is your primary, or boot, drive, and usually contains most of your applications. OS tasks and multi-tasking benefit from the random performance an SSD can provide. Faster boot times, faster application load times, faster task switching, and more are guaranteed with an SSD. This is often the best upgrade you can make to an older system - although make sure it can support NVMe drives, if you are going that route.
How about gaming? SSDs load games far faster than HDDs and it’s almost always worthwhile if you’re a gamer. In the future, DirectStorage will also take advantage of NVMe bandwidth to provide the best gaming experience. What about other data? While HDDs are still sufficient for archival use and media, if you’re moving files a lot or engaging in content creation then a SSD is the better bet. Having faster access, that is lower latency, also improves the experience of working with files, particularly smaller ones.
While SATA SSDs will give you most of the benefit, we at Sabrent only sell NVMe SSDs. We do have products that work with HDDs and SATA SSDs, but we feel the way forward with storage is with the speed granted by NVMe SSDs. Newer motherboards come with multiple M.2 sockets and adapters are also options, the latter even for older machines, so upgrading and expanding is easier than ever. We also offer high capacity options, so you don’t have to compromise on space if you really need it.
See our storage products here.
