The Importance of a Solid State Drive

ANDY: I’ve got Windows 10 on my computer and it just seems to be getting slower and slower. Am I imagining things?
CHARLIE: Good question. And the answer is: No. Windows 10 is an extremely resource intensive operating system. (That means that is uses a lot of disk drive activity and memory to get the job done.) In addition, because the update processes are, at times replacing the whole operating system, they can take a long time with a slow disk drive in your system.

ANDY: I can understand that. So, what do I do…Get a fast disk drive?
CHARLIE: You can get a faster disk drive. Many of the systems we see have a disk drive that rotates at 5400 rpm. They do have faster disks that rotate at 7200, 10000 and 15000 rpm. But the price goes up as the speed goes up. In addition, there are a couple of inherent issues with disk drives that you might also want to consider: They have moving parts which are subject to failure either from usage or from misuse. And, because of the way they work, your data can get fragmented and result in slower system operation.

ANDY: I can also understand that. Do you have any alternatives that might give me faster, more reliable performance?
CHARLIE: As a matter of fact, I do. Consider Solid State Drives or SSDs. Whereas a hard disk drive has a rotating disk with a magnet head that flies very close to the disk and moves across the diameter of the disk…moving parts subject to failure…a solid state drive has no moving parts. As an example, you might consider a flash drive that you carry in your pocket. You can do virtually anything with it and it still works to save several gigabytes of your data…I think one of mine has even gone thru the wash. So SSDs are more reliable.

In addition, because there are no moving parts, SSDs are faster, much faster than disk drives. And this is really what people notice about them.
The difference between the flash drive and the solid state drive is the size

ANDY: So far, so good. Is there anything I should be aware of?
CHARLIE: The SSDs come in sizes from 128 GB up to 500 GB. This usually isn’t a problem. Most of the time even though people have terabyte drives in their systems they are usually virtually empty. They do have larger SSDs but the price is larger too.

ANDY: And how do I replace my hard disk drive with a solid state drive?
CHARLIE: We can clone your existing drive onto an SSD and all your programs and data are preserved. The only difference will be the system will run faster.

ANDY: This sounds like a win-win situation: a more reliable, faster computer.
CHARLIE: Exactly! All they have to do is bring their computer to us and we can clean up the drive and clone it to a new SSD. The process takes about a day. They can contact us from our web site pcapp.com or they can call us at 533-6510. Before your computer’s down, just call Charlie Brown.