Hey, I've recently started to think about buying myself an SSD drive, but I don't know which size is optimal - meaning I'll have a lot faster system without spending too much money. Do you think that buying a 40GB SSD for 25$, so that I'll install OS, and some essential applications there is a good idea
I would suggest going with one larger than 40GB. Your OS alone is going to take up the bulk of that. Go with at least 60GB, if not a bit larger if you can find one that's cheap.
Yes, a SSD is always worth it, no matter the size. They are much faster than their counterparts, HDDs, and can speed up your start up and overall performance. The storage capacity of an SSD doesn't matter much to the performance, other than the fact that 10-30% of your SSD should be empty in order to achieve maximum performance.
Yes, buying an SSD can make make a computer five years old feel like you just bought it yesterday and with the prices constantly dropping I highly suggest it . The only downside is the installation on some models like a mac for example are extremely difficult and paying someone to install it for you can be expensive if you have a small budget.
SSDs haven't yet hit the threshold for being worth it in every single usage case. However, the prices are dropping, storage capacities are increasing, and the drives are getting more reliable on a long-term basis. SSDs are inherently faster than HDDs, and they come with other benefits. Most users, but not all, can benefit from opting for an SSD over another option. They're still a little expensive for some users, though.
Bought a SSD for the build of my bf as a program drive (he has his OS and his various music programs running on it), and a terabyte of HDD for stocking his files. We did buy a 256GB SSD, though, for around 88 euros. So far, it runs pretty smoothly.
40GB is too small, and $25 is definitely not enough for a good SSD. You can't just buy the cheapest parts and expect it to upgrade your system, that's not really how hardware works. You need to look at the read/write performance of the drive to see if it will bring you any real difference.
It would depend on what kind of work you're doing. Usually a 7200RPM HDD is fine when it comes to overall speed but if you're really into performance, SSD's are worth the few extra bucks. 40GB is indeed really small, go for at least 120GB's. I have a 128GB's Crucial SSD on my laptop and all my apps, games and the OS fits snugly with 60GB's more of free space.
An SSD drive is (and those are not just numbers that manufacturers inflate so they get more clients) around 35-45% faster than regular hard drives. Now, I haven't looked up or read about why they are that much faster, but I could really see myself buying one and using it stricly for the OS on my computer. I would install my Windows on it, and it definitely makes a difference, calculation times, boot times, etc. Another benefit to them is that they are very compact - you can google images and see the difference between the size of regular disks and SSD ones. This helps when building a new PC or laptop, especially a laptop.
The sweet spot right now for better than average SSD drives are the 256 GB drives that will run you around $120. Dollar per dollar there is no better upgrade you can get for your computer. If you are into any type of gaming you should note that some of the newer games just will not play on anything less than a SSD drive because of the huge size of the graphics they need to load almost constantly. Look for something with greater than 500 MB transfer speeds and I recommend Samsung SSD's myself
