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Storage Choice of Drive type

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Arboreal, 11 Apr 2016.

  1. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    I am building an office PC for a friend that works in a charity office and has zero budget.
    I've sourced on the MP (thanks Zoon) a Dell C2D machine which will be waaay better than the 10yr old Celeron beige box.
    I was going to give it (having raised a few £) a new hard drive.
    I have £35 to spend, and know that she is using less than the current 80GB drive can store.

    Any reason not to get a 120GB SSD? Otherwise it would be a 500GB HDD for the same money.
     
  2. Big_malc

    Big_malc Minimodder

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    what are they going to do with the machine ??
     
  3. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    Hi B_M,
    Thanks for looking, it's basic office work.
    Emails, writing documents, printing handouts etc.

    Nothing massively demanding
     
  4. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Although it obviously won't be the ideal min size (as there won't be enough nand dies to saturate the channels) & for that money for a new SSD you'd be looking at a more basic model (so slower again), there's no inherent reason why not... & it'll obviously be much quicker than a HDD - just not as quick as it could be.

    Whilst i always under partition/over provision SSDs anyway, as it helps with maintaining speeds, i would certainly do it in this instance so that it cannot be overfilled - taking it down to a ~90-95GB formatted capacity...

    ...& i assume that you're either going to keep the current 80GB drive for backing up to or everything's on a server?
     
  5. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    Thanks pd, I will have some sort of other drive in there (I wanted a new fresh drive to bot and run from) but not the 80GB HDD as it's IDE :eeek:.

    It's not doing massive high speed stuff, so not reaching the possible SSD potential isn't going to be a problem. Quicker than HDD and no moving parts does it for me.

    Never looked into manual over provisioning - intriguing.

    I'l be ordering tomorrow...
     
  6. Mighty_Miro_WD

    Mighty_Miro_WD What's a Dremel?

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    Hi @Arboreal!

    Basically if you decide to go with an SSD this will give you faster loading times, so your OS will boot up faster. That being said, if you perform any operating system related task that needs to retrieve data from the drive, it will be faster then if your OS was on the HDD. Also, while it's true that an SSD will help boot speeds compared to a HDD, the faster random read and write speeds will also make a noticeable improvement to general computer use, such as when loading programs (if they are installed on the SSD).

    Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

    Cheers! :)
     
  7. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Ummm... As the OP has already said that the user hadn't filled up the single 80GB HDD that they had on their previous machine, then i'm not quite sure what other s/w you believe that they are going to be installing that won't fit onto the SSD???

    Otherwise, as a quick non-exclusive list - (a) all manner of OS DLLs, drivers, system files, etc are called by s/w & (b) various background tasks are loaded from the OS drive when needed, (c) the pagefile needs to be on the SSD for speed & (d) if they're using hibernation to save power (which would be particularly valid in an office environment) then it'll make a significant difference to usability there - so limiting the OS improvement to solely being about boot times isn't exactly the most valid of statements.
     
  8. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    Thanks guys, I have a 120GB SSD loaded up with Win7, and Office is going on tonight.
    It all looks good so far.
    Cheers
     
  9. Buzzons

    Buzzons Minimodder

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    Going to upgrade Win7 to 10 for free too? (Better support for SSDs etc - and future looking, it'll be have a longer supported life too for patches and the like)
     
    PocketDemon likes this.
  10. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    +1

    & obviously with something like www.classicshell.net then you can set up a default start menu that's much closer to Win 7.
     
  11. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    Ooooh, even better - haven't tried Win 10 in anger yet..
    Never tried classic shell either, a win 7 looking experience would be even better.

    Thanks, good calls guys
     
  12. Buzzons

    Buzzons Minimodder

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    I'd potentially suggest trying the win10 default shell.. it's really quite nice (and not that hard to relearn from 7) - then you don't have to rely on third party shells keeping up to date with Win10 changes etc.
     
  13. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    it's obviously choice, though my thinking was that for a work machine then you really don't want any learning curve at all - so, much as when installing Win8 & 10 for my folks & Win10 for my sister, it's about adding an option that they're used to so that things are as simple as possible...

    ...so, the way i set things up is to have the Windows key be Classic Shell & Shift+Window be the Win10 default.

    That said i then use Classic Shell almost exclusively as there's too many bits of s/w that i need to use spasmodically, which makes the 'All Apps' option completely unwieldy vs a structured set of folders - but with a more ltd amount of stuff installed then it'd perhaps be a little more reasonable... ...or everything could just be pinned to the taskbar of course.

    As to the providing updates if/when needed, i've been using Classic Shell since first installing Win8 & there's never been any hassle - touch wood of course - though, as said, it's not that it can't easily be set up so that there's simple access to the Win10 default menu were there to be a delay in an update where a change caused serious issues.


    Oh & if you want to try Classic Shell, the only bit that's really useful imho is the Classic Menu part...

    ...& https://mega.nz/#!r5NVgZYD!cWBw0BK9wpCKwYoqcWNT5wdUCHleenw5qtfpI-Sw6yg are my settings for it - simply that it might speed things up for you vs working through all of the options.

    So, having installed & opened 'Classic Start Menu Settings', you click on backup & there's a 'Load from XML' option - & i'll keep the link valid until at least Monday.
     
    Last edited: 20 Apr 2016
  14. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    PD, that's brilliant thanks.
    Dad is the first Win 10 user in the family - Classic Shell may make it more friendly as he liked 7.

    I have a test build to try 7 on, so CS would be good to try on that first.
    On up the learning curve we go!

    Having had a punch up with UEFI secure boot tonight, I'm done for the day and turning in.
     
  15. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    No problem at all.

    Yeah, whilst you can alter minor visual options to whatever preferences you have, these settings allowed my folks to go from Win7 & my sister from XP with a zero learning curve (other than telling them that Shift+Win gave access to the apps - though it's just my father with his love for MS Solitaire that uses that at all ttbomk) - so sensibly they should work for anyone.

    Well, something like "Pin to Start Menu (Classic Shell)" from a right click for quicker access to s/w you don't want on the taskbar is as completely self-explanatory as the normal "Pin to taskbar" of course.
     

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