SSD?

[boudicca]

My desktop is slowing down. It is running Windows 10 through the free update. I've been told that installing an SSD would help prolong its life. Is there space for a second hard drive in the case - originally described as 'stylish black piano enigma micro-atx case'?
If there isn't a second space, would running an SSD externally via USB be OK?

 

[steaky360]

Your PC might run faster with a SSD, but there are several factors which affect the perceived 'snappiness' or 'speed' of a computer.

Do you have access to your full specs from when you bought the machine? It would be really helpful if you could post them here.

You do not want to run your PC from a SSD connected with a USB. Can you take a look in your case? Maybe take some pictures if you're not sure? There's usually room for several HDDs (or SDDs).

Do you still have your welcome pack with the additional cable(s) etc. in it?

 

[Oussebon]

It's extremely likely you can add an SSD to your existing system. The info @steaky360 asks for above will help suggest how to move forward. You can get your full PC specs from your PC Specialist account orders section, assuming you bought it from them.

To be honest, performing a clean install of Windows on your existing hardware may well pep up the PC's 'responsiveness' without adding an SSD.

That said, adding an SSD is a cheap way of making most PCs load and feel much faster, and doing a clean Windows install is a convenient moment to add one in.

 

[ubuysa]

Slowdown of older PCs is commonly the result of poor hard disk management.

Cleaning out garbage, reducing the volume of data on the drive, and defragging the drive will make a big difference to speed and performance.

Clean installing Windows, as Oussebon suggested, results in a garbage free, uncluttered and unfragmented HDD, which is why it always improves performance.

If you upgraded to Windows 10 in any way other than via a clean install from bootable media it's highly likely that your Windows 10 system is less than optimal.

Installing an SSD removes all of the performance problems inherent in HDDs, but it's a more expensive option than a clean install.

Your cheapest option is to clean install Windows 10 from bootable media, its most likely that this alone will greatly improve oerformance. If you still seek better performance still then an SSD is definitely the way to go.

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[mishra]

While cleaning up the drive, defrag and full reinstall is the cheapest way to go it is not going to make any reasonable difference. IMO it's just a waste of time. If you are still using the old school HDD then go and buy yourself a new SSD. Install everything from scratch and it will all feel like a brand new computer. You will be surprised by how much everything will speed up. Of course to enjoy that experience you need to install your Windows onto it. So running SSD from USB or a secondary drive will not work like that.

Backup your data, pull out the old drive and replace with new SSD. Then instal Windows 10. Loads of Youtube videos on how to do it. If you are really clueless then maybe get a Samsung SSD and use their cloning software. It will clone your current drive to that new SSD (including OS, data, programs, etc).

 

[ubuysa]

While cleaning up the drive, defrag and full reinstall is the cheapest way to go it is not going to make any reasonable difference. IMO it's just a waste of time.

This is just plain wrong.

The principal component of any HDD's response time is seek time - the time required to move the read/write heads to the required track. Longer seeks (across a large area of the disk for example) take more time, multiple seeks between a fragmented file and the MFT take masses more time, that's why regular defragmentation is essential on an HDD. In addition, the more data on an HDD the longer the average seek times will be, simply because the data may be a long way (in track terms) from the MFT. HDDs become over-full when garbage cleaning is neglected resulting in lots of unneeded and unwanted files occupying valuable drive space (and lengthening seeks). The worst case scenario of course is an over full and fragmented HDD, because then the drive is doing multiple seeks each of which is long.

It is I'm afraid an absolute fact that removing garbage, archiving unused (but needed) data, and then defragging always results in vastly reduced response times on older and previously unmanaged HDDs. A clean install of Windows improves HDD response time even more because a clean install places all files physically close to the MFT greatly reducing seek times. You can do the same thing with an optimising defragger but it's usually too laborious to bother with.

It is perfectly true that an SSD will outperform even the most perfectly managed HDD but it is quite wrong to suggest that 'cleaning up the drive, defrag or a full reinstall is a waste of time'. Hard drive management is never a waste of time and spending money is not always the best option.

 

[mishra]

If one is going to go with the re-install of Windows then NOT buying SSD in the first place is a total mistake!

Old HDD tech is dead - and rightly so. It's just datacentres and home NAS/storage solutions which are still using it - and that's where I agree, that data cleanup, defrag is important.
For home use? Just get SSD and don't bother with any defrags. It is something that should stay in the past where it belongs

 

[Oussebon]

A clean install of Windows on the HDD could well significantly improve things for @boudicca - without needing to spend any cash.

That wold be true if he/she already had an SSD - since Windows in-place upgrades can cause all kinds of issues, especially with updates over time.

I think @ubuysa's point that an SSD might not be necessary is quite right. For all we know, @boudicca could really use the £20-£30 for an SSD for something else instead. But I'm sure we all agree that if they do have £20-£30 spare, and want to make using their PC as fast as possible, adding an SSD would be a great upgrade

 

[ubuysa]

If one is going to go with the re-install of Windows then NOT buying SSD in the first place is a total mistake!

Nonsense. A reinstall of Windows is a relatively straightforward process that is FREE. It is always eminently more sensible to attempt a free solution to ones problem than it is to go out and spend money without being certain that there is no other more cost-effective option. The OP would be rightly angry with you for advising them to spend money on an SSD if they later found that a clean install of Windows on their existing HDD would have given them a level of performance that was acceptable at no cost.

Old HDD tech is dead - and rightly so. It's just datacentres and home NAS/storage solutions which are still using it - and that's where I agree, that data cleanup, defrag is important.
For home use? Just get SSD and don't bother with any defrags. It is something that should stay in the past where it belongs

Rubbish. I'll go further - total rubbish and dangerous rubbish as well.

HDDs have a very important part to play in home systems simply because an expensive SSD is a complete waste of money for many data types. Video and music files, for example, gain absolutely zero benefit from being on an SSD - if you don't know why then you have no business making the comments you just did. In addition, a very large percentage of home user data is in small files (less than 1MB) and whilst these can be loaded from an SSD much faster than from an HDD the difference in response times is measured in milliseconds (except on really badly managed HDDs) and I defy you to actually see the difference. Once again, if you don't know why that is you have no business making the comments you just did.

It is true that when SSDs can be had at a similar price to HDDs (for the same capacity) it won't be sensible to buy an HDD, even though a large volume of most user data gets no noticeable benefit from an SSD, but we're not even close to price equality yet and an SSD is a relatively expensive purchase. An SSD for Windows and programs (that really do benefit from an SSD) and an HDD for user data is still the best price/performance option and will likely be so for some time yet.

In any case, the wisest and most sensible advice will always be to ensure that you're getting the best performance from the kit you already have before you go out and spend money.

 

[mishra]

Look I'm not going to argue either way. OP asked for a suggestion and I provided one. I still believe he/she is most likely be better of going with a new SSD over anything else. That is what I would do at least. 480GB SSD can be had for like £40 nowadays, the existing drive can be used for the rest of storage.

I will walk myself out of this conversation as at this point it leads nowhere.

 

[ubuysa]

Look I'm not going to argue either way. OP asked for a suggestion and I provided one. I still believe he/she is most likely be better of going with a new SSD over anything else. That is what I would do at least. 480GB SSD can be had for like £40 nowadays, the existing drive can be used for the rest of storage.

I will walk myself out of this conversation as at this point it leads nowhere.

It's perfectly reasonable to provide opinions. Saying that in your view buying an SSD was the OP's best option is reasonable. Telling the OP that HDD management provides no benefit and is a waste of time, or that HDDs are now old technology for a home user are both demonstrably untrue and thus not reasonable.

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[boudicca]

Gosh didn't expect to set off a spat. I do regularly defrag. And will do another defrag session tonight

Here is the spec of my pc. It came with Windows 7 pro, but I took the free upgrade and it now runs Windows 10. That was a download and I needed help in installing it because it clearly dislike something on the machine (drivers??). I will happily try a clean install but am too ignorant to know how to do it - presumably download the OS to a usb, remove windows 10 (backing up existing files first?) and then reinstall?

If £20-£30 is the sort of price range for an SSD then it is no big deal - it is the actual installation process that frightens me - but I'll happily try other stuff to speed the machine up. I don't do a lot of video, bar the odd Youtube one, but I do have a lot of files and photos on OneDrive that download to the pc when I am working on them. I mainly use WORD, EXCEL, ACCESS and various online databases.

Case	STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA MICRO-ATX CASE + 2 FRONT USB
Processor (CPU)	AMD PHENOM II X4 955 (3.20GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard	ASUS® M4A78LT-M: mATX MAINBOARD, DDR3, USB 2.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)	8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card	1GB ATI RADEON™ HD5770 - DVI,HDMI - DX® 11
2nd Graphics Card	NONE
1st Storage Drive	640GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD6402AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
2nd Storage Drive	NONE
RAID	NONE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive	24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive	NONE
External Hard Drive	NONE
Memory Card Reader	INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply	450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling	STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card	ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking	ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD
USB/Thunderbolt Options	USB BLUETOOTH ADAPTER
TV Card	PCTV SYSTEMS DVB-T DUAL TUNER DIGITAL FREEVIEW TV CARD
Operating System	Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

 

[Oussebon]

I will happily try a clean install but am too ignorant to know how to do it - presumably download the OS to a usb, remove windows 10 (backing up existing files first?) and then reinstall?

Pretty much, yes. You can make a Windows 10 USB here:

Download Windows 10

Boot from the USB (i.e. use the boot options / BIOS to boot from the USB, before windows loads).

Follow the prompts for the installation. At the part it gives you the option for a custom / advanced install, select that, and delete all existing partitions on your HDD so that all there is is "unallocated space". The proceed with the install.

As you say, you'll have backed up files first to external media / cloud storage (you seem to have Onedrive already which I assume gives you 1TB of cloud storage and is more than enough for all your files?) because this process will get rid of everything on the disk.

Your case, the Engima, is a special PC Specialist one, so we can't look up the specs online. However, it is likely to have a free drive bay you can install an SSD into. If it only has 3.5" drive bays you'll need to use a caddy to install a 2.5" SSS. That's a small tray you screw the SSD into, then screw into the case.

The process of adding an SSD to a system is very simple and I'm sure you'll be fine with it. Ultimately it's just attaching 2 cables, and turning a handful of screws. It's a very popular DIY upgrade.

If you can take the side panel off, usually secured with 2 screws at the back, you can photograph the inside of the case, especially the drive cages which are usually at the front, as @steaky360 suggested and we can tell you what's what.

In terms of SSDs, you could get a decent budget one like the BX500 for £30 at 240gb capacity

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT240BX500SSD1-Internal-Solid-State/dp/B07G3YNLJB

You can get good 500gb ones for ~£50 like the WD Blue. And budget 1TB ones for ~£80. As @ubuysa mentioned above, some files types don't benefit from being on an SSD at all, so a small one may be all you need, to use alongside your HDD and cloud storage

 

[SpyderTracks]

Just to add, although you can get sizes as low as 120Gb, I wouldn't it's very restrictive and you'll find you have to manage the drive quite heavily over time.

250Gb would be the minimum size I'd go for an OS drive. If you're thinking of storing any games on the OS drive, then personally (and if funds allow) I'd consider 500Gb the minimum size.