...Yes, yes you should...
Okay so that's the end of this article, I hope you enjoyed it and learned alot.
Kidding of course, there's still some other points we should cover.
What is an SSD anyway, and how is it different than a Hard Drive?
Well first let's talk about how a Hard Drive actually works.
Inside a Hard Drive, there are one or more shiny silver platters where information is stored magnetically,
and an arm mechanism that moves a tiny magnet called a read-write head back and forth over the platters to read or write information.
The platters are divided into billions of tiny areas. Each can be magnitized to store a 1, or demagnetized to store a 0.
In a Solid State Drive data is stored in microchips in the form of flash memory. It's the same technology used in SD Cards and USB Flash Drives.
This way the data can be easily accessed without any mechanical parts having to physically move to where the data is located.
Performance
Hard Drives are the slowest part of a computer and are going to be the bottleneck in your system's performance.
Your RAM for example is typically over 100 times faster.
Because SSDs have no moving parts, data can be read and written to them much faster than a mechanical arm seaching through a drive platter to find the data.
This has a huge impact in terms of noticeable performance since programs are constantly reading and writing files in the background.
Reliability
The same reasons that an SSD is very fast are also why it's very reliable.
One of the most common repairs I do for laptops is replacing Hard Drives that have failed mechanically.
Because they're mechanical, they wear out over time. Sectors become unreadable, and eventually the drives can't keep it together well enough to boot into the OS.
SSDs don't have this problem because they don't operate mechanically, so they're more durable and last longer.
Capacity and Cost
This is where Hard Drives have still got it. Higher capacities at lower costs.
The cost of SSDs has come down quite a bit in the past 5 years but they can still be 3 or more times more expensive.
The way most computer manufacturers keep a happy medium is using a small SSD as the main drive with your OS and all your programs, and a large Hard Drive as a storage drive so you get the best of both worlds.
Most motherboards will have extra connections on them available to add more drives, so you can usually take advantage of this strategy as well.
Upgrading
Ok so mostly any mid to high range new computer comes with an SSD now anyway. So if your whole system is due for an upgrade, that might be the way to go.
If you'd like to add an SSD to your current system you can message us at damien@pinkfedora.net or on our Facebook Page. Or check out your local computer service shop.