SSD vs 7200 RPM HDD for Notebook

[marcplante]

Getting ready to buy a new notebook for my wife.

She will be doing general surfing and mail and watching some videos and listening to music.

Her current notebook has (Samsung R580) 150GB of data, apps etc on it. The new notebook (ASUS N56) comes with 8G of RAM and a 750GB 7200RPM HD.

I was thinking of buying her a 256 GB SDD to make the new machine more snappy (She gets impatient waiting for apps, etc to load).

I am having second thoughts since she will probably have this drive within 75% full within a year or two, leaving the SSD bogging down and the need to do a data migration to a new drive. [She hates change of any type].

Ideally I would run a 120GB SSD for her apps and leave a large file store in place, but there is not a second drive bay AFAIK.

Do I leave her with the 7200 RPM drive? are there other ways to speed up "transient." performance? Will an SSD be happy through 80-85% utilization without bogging down? (Seagate momentus drive?)

Thanks,

 

[rsutoratosu]

SSD is so cheap now, its totally worth it. By end of the year you can probably buy a bigger ssd and Image the stuff over

 

[Burner27]

Buy 256GB SSD for OS/Apps on machine. Take laptop HDD put it in a portable 2.5" USB enclosure and use as external storage when needed for music/data/etc....

 

[fluffmonster]

Sounds a little like my wife. If she can't handle the idea of putting some files on an external drive, then tell her she can't have "snappy" and move on. If the old lappy had a 5400rpm drive, the new hdd will seem noticeably faster anyway. Also, its probably ultimately easier to deal with the occasional grumble/outburst over waiting than trying to get her to adapt to an external drive.

 

[santilmo]

Similar case, bought my wife a new Samsung Series 5 NP535U3C and I am also thinking of getting a SSD and then put the original HDD in a 2.5 enclosure...

 

[WiseUp216]

Have you looked at the Momentus XT hybrid drives? A good compromise of speed & storage.



Edit: Right after I posted this I checked my e-mail and saw that Newegg has the 500GB drive on sale for 69.99 today!

 

[Lore]

Have you looked at the Momentus XT hybrid drives? A good compromise of speed & storage.



Edit: Right after I posted this I checked my e-mail and saw that Newegg has the 500GB drive on sale for 69.99 today!

Wow, what a price! Depending on what the old laptop had for CPU and memory configuration, the new laptop will probably be a lot faster with the 8gb of RAM and the 7200 drive. If you still want to replace the drive, the Momentus is a good option.

 

[marcplante]

I considered the Momentus, but haven't heard any details. Seems like an interesting concept. I've read a couple quick reviews that seem to indicate that the concept works, though it would be good to see a more detailed bechmark to understand if they will meet my wife's requirements, or wether I need to go for a full SSD.

Need to search Momentus for a bit and see what turns up. I figured I'd find some strong opinions in anandtech.

 

[kalrith]

I went with a 750GB 7200rpm drive for my wife. She went from a 7yo single-core processor with 5400rpm drive to an i7, so she really appreciates the speed increase! If I were to upgrade the drive, it would be a hybrid drive. She easily has about 300GB of data on there. It also fills up quickly when we go on trips and copy my son's favorite shows to her hard drive.

 

[Dessert Tears]

Edit: Right after I posted this I checked my e-mail and saw that Newegg has the 500GB drive on sale for 69.99 today!

According to [thread=2262634]the Hot Deals thread[/thread], it's a warm deal on the older revision.

Need to search Momentus for a bit and see what turns up. I figured I'd find some strong opinions in anandtech.

Note that the Momentus (not XT) is a conventional 7200 RPM drive. Momentus XT reviews by Anand: first generation, second generation.

 

[murphyc]

Getting ready to buy a new notebook for my wife....

She gets impatient...
She hates change...

Get a new wife. Or have her do her own IT.

Or...

If you're really confident she has a 500GB requirement inside of 12 months, I'd leave the HDD in the computer. If she complains about migration, don't do the migration. If she complains about being out of space, explain she's in what's called a mutually exclusive options situation: migration or no-migration; more space, no more space. It's very simple. I'm sure she's not as dense as you're proposing.

Otherwise, I'd consider SSD for the laptop (faster, more energy efficient), and a NAS for all of this stuff she's supposedly accumulating. Easier migration next time around because most of the crap she's collecting will be on the NAS rather than local.

 

[kmmatney]

Similar situation for me - luckily my wife doesn't need a lot of storage, so a 128GB SSD was all she needed.

I have a Momentus XT 500GB drive as well, and it works ell in certain situations. I had it's running in my laptop for while, and now it's in a desktop, where it actually performs better. It gives SSD-like performance in many situations such as starting windows and loading often-used Apps. This is probably the usage scenario you would use it in, so I think it would work out well for your situation.

However if you can live with 256GB of space, then I'd recommend the Crucial M4, or any other SSD in that price range. I have a Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 in my laptop (2 bays) and they work great!

 

[marcplante]

I've told her we'll start with the 7200 RPM drive. She can use it for a couple week test drive as a surfing box etc then we can either migrate her data to that or plug in a 256GB SSD and NAS her photos and home movies if she wants more performance. (Sort of NAS. My Desktop is migrating to server duty in the house.

The extra few weeks will give me time to bottom feed for a hot deal on SSDs.