Solid State Drives (SSD’s)

Solid-state-drives (SSD) are fast becoming the norm for modern PC’s. They are already a smart, affordable upgrade for desktops and laptops, bringing about a massive performance boost! On first release, due mainly to cost, they were reserved for PC gamers and enthusiasts and not the home user or the typical office. This is no longer the case.

These drives are not prone to mechanical failure, nor will they develop traditional ‘magnetic’ errors; they are essentially a large flash memory module, and so do not contain any moving parts of magnetic disk ‘platters’ like a standard hard drive (HDD). They tend to come with massive lifespam claims, equally huge manufacturer warranties and, unless your PC is quite old, are a very sensible upgrade.

The ideal setup is to have the SSD as your main working drive, with the operating system and main programs you use on it, paired with a second standard HDD for large data storage – for all your usual hefty files, such as pictures, videos and music. However, as time goes by, SSD’s are getting bigger and, especially if you not store much data on your PC, you may be fine with just the one SSD drive. You’ll need an expert to ‘clone’ all your data from your old primary HDD and check it’s all setup OK, but it’s a fairly simple process and we only amount to a modest labour charge.

As SSD’s are of the 2.5″ form-factor, unlike typical desktop PC 3.5″ hard drives, they can be fitted in both desktops and laptops (and most other devices using a typical hard drive).