11/19/2022
How can I speed-up my PC? (OR) Hard Drives vs Solid State Drives
It’s been awhile since I thought I had anything interesting to share in my Facebook Posts. I hope you, the reader, find this one interesting.
You may wonder why your computer gets slower and slower over time and how do I speed it up? There are three primary causes:
1) Too many programs open at the same time for the amount of memory your system has.
2) Malware or Junkware programs running in the background of which you are probably unaware.
3) Your Data/Storage drive.
Although I can diagnose and usually repair/improve performance in all these areas, I’m only addressing the last one today: Your computer’s storage drive.
Traditionally, computers contained a mechanical Hard/Fixed Disk Drives (HDDs) (First drive in picture at end of text). If you don’t care about how they work, skip to the next paragraph now. These things work just like phonograph/record players and are subject to many of the same limitations. The vinyl disk is replaced with an aluminum disk coated with magnetic particles which can be magnetized to either a “0” or “1” state. The needle is replaced with a magnetic recording head, much like a cassette/VHS recording head mounted on a spring-loaded arm to keep it touching the disk when the disk is not spinning. When the PC is on, the disk spins so fast the head is kept floating on a cushion of air so narrow that a smoke particle would cause a head crash and this is why they are sealed drives.
There are three major problems with HDDs:
1) They are the only moving mechanical device (other than cooling fans) in your computer and are subject to mechanical failure.
2) The disk is rotating at 5400RPM or more and thus becomes a gyroscope. You may have had a spinning “top” when you were younger; the ability to stand up and not fall over when spinning is the centrifugal force of a gyroscope. If you move any computer (read “laptop”) while it is on, you force the HDD (gyroscope) out of its centrifugal force field and the spring-loaded “needle” (read/write head) comes into contact with the disk. The result is bits of magnetic material (your data) flying off in every direction and is called a “head crash” and usually is catastrophic. If you moved your laptop when it is on, you either already have an SSD upgrade or you have been extremely lucky that your head crash(es) hit in areas not containing Windows or the directory pointing to where data is stored on the drive.
3) As files are constantly erased and new ones constantly added (more if you are on the internet), the files become scattered all over the drive because no single “freed-up” space is large enough for the next new file. This is called Disk/File Fragmentation. Windows has a rudimentary disk defragmenter built-in, which helps to some degree, but is by no means a very efficient utility. As a result, there are dozens of 3rd party disk defragmenters which perform a much better job than the one built-into Windows.
Enter SSDs (Solid State Drives). Like the name implies, these are completely solid state – similar but faster than a USB Memory Stick/Thumb Drive. There are no moving parts so a computer can be moved around freely without fear of head crashes. Data/Files is/are accessed directly so file fragmentation is no longer an issue. The result is a much faster drive, which in-turn speeds-up your entire computer’s functionality. So why aren’t ALL drives SSDs now? SSDs have a limited Read/Write life. It’s very high, but an SSD in high use can and will still eventually fail, and they are more expensive to make than mechanical drives at this time (hopefully this will change soon).
2.5” SSD (Second drive in picture) drives are pretty much “universal” drives as they are the same size as those found in most laptop computers. If you wish to use them in a desktop/tower computer, a 2.5” to 3.5” drive sled adapter is usually required for mounting the SSD. Speeds are typically SATA-3 at 6Gbps but resulting speed is dependent on the motherboard being able to support SATA-3 to get the highest performance. Even if an older motherboard only supports up to SATA-2 at 3 Gbps, this is usually fast enough to notice a significant improvement over an HDD.
M.2 SATA SSD (Top right drive in picture) drives are functionally identical to the 2.5” drives above. However, they are in a much smaller package that looks similar to a desktop memory module albeit with the connectors on one end. They use less power and can only plug into a special connector on newer motherboards built to support them.
M.2 NVMe SSD (Bottom right drive in picture) The latest SSD entries are NVMe SSDs. These speedsters reside directly on the motherboard system data bus which among other things connects the system memory directly to the CPU. By placing the SSD on the system data bus, designers have bypassed a no-longer-needed I/O chip on the motherboard which acts as a traffic director (and slows-down anything going through it) for all data coming to/from the computer from anything not directly part of the memory and CPU functions including data/system drives, the internet, sound processing, etc. Now the CPU and memory can directly access anything on the SSD resulting in faster booting, faster data access, faster “computer.”
Almost any computer with an HDD can be upgraded to one of the SSD types above, resulting in noticeable performance improvement. Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
If you found my article interesting, please check out my User Friendly Computers web site: [email protected]
We are a licensed and registered home-based business with over 35 years of experience working on IBM compatible and Windows personal computers.
