Tips for buying a SSD in 2018

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
Derek Semeraro
Posts: 124
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 6:49 am

Tips for buying a SSD in 2018

Post by Derek Semeraro » Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:47 am

A SSD is strongly recommended for boosting operating system and application speed and performance for just about any computer user. For many, it could have more real-world impact and workflow improvement than having a high-end CPU.

Between buying a SSD or a hard drive first, SSD may be preferable first so that you don't have to transfer all of your OS data onto a SSD later if you choose to upgrade.

120 GB is definitely doable, but you may need to micromanage space or also use a hard drive to supplement it. 500 GB is recommendable if using applications which can utilize all of that space (i.e. DAW's with many instrument packs or video editing software with many saved projects). Otherwise, 250 GB is a good sweetspot.

Buying a larger capacity than you plan on needing in the mid-term is not necessarily as good idea because SSD prices are set to fall dramatically during 2019 and 2020 according to Samsung.

NVMe SSD's and Optane SSD's are the fastest, although in terms of real-world improvement of workflow, these choices may have diminished returns compared to just buying a relatively fast SATA SSD. Not all SSD's are created equally; some are much faster than others, but even a relatively SSD runs much faster than a hard drive.

A M.2 SSD that uses a SATA port's bandwidth won't run faster than a SATA SSD. Keep in mind that using a M.2 via the SATA bandwidth does disable one of your SATA ports, so be careful not to have more drives than your motherboard supports.

Post Reply