Possibly investing in a SSD

[ChickenSoup]

All righty guys, I desperately need a second hard drive for my desktop. I can mess around well enough on my laptop (as I spend most of my time at school) but anytime a break comes around I become increasingly aware of the fact that I have 3 or 4 games I'd like to play, none of which are installed on my desktop, the only computer in my house that can run them (Shogun II, AC: Brotherhood, etc). Did I mention that I've gota bout 30GB left on this system?

Yeah. It's getting FRUSTAMACATIN so I was wondering if you guys had advice as to some midrange SSDs? I'm thinking between 100-200 dollars and at least 120GB. I don't need a lot, as I honestly don't play that many games anymore, but I just want to move most of my games to the SSD while my 250GB HDD maintains videos, pictures, documents, and all that stuff.

ANYWAY

SUGGESTIONS

TIPS

TRICKS

TREATS

And most of all, answer me this question: Is it worth purchasing an SSD if HDDs are stil so much cheaper, especially considering this isn't exactly an extreme gaming rig and I am not going to dump a ton o fmoney into it.

[ccgr]

been happy with our OCZ's

[ArchAngel]

I heard good things about the OCZ Agility and Vertex. I'm happy with my Crucial M4, and I believe it's supposed to be one of the more stable SSD's out there.
Stay away from the Corsair Force.

Also, be sure to check the r/w speeds and go for the ones with ~500 MB/s (agility/vertex 3 and the M4 have these).

[ccgr]

Well Jay is a little gun shy now, I think his SSD fried last night only a few months old. He backed it up minutes beforehand because he was planning on putting Windows 8 on it. We both keep our profiles on SATA HDDs

[DeadManReedeemed]

SSD?

[ArchAngel]

Solid State Drive. Instead of a hard drive, which has stores data on a rotating disk, it's stored entirely without moving physical parts so it's energy usage way lower (great for laptops) and it's much, much faster, since it doesn't have to wait for the spinning of the disk to grab memory.

[DeadManReedeemed]

Any way I can get it installed?

[ArchAngel]

It's rather easy to install, as computer parts go. You plug it in to a SATA port, and your OS will usually find it and format it. You'll want to do a couple extra steps to get it mapping memory sectors correctly.

The hardest part would probably just be reinstalling your OS to the SSD, since you'll want to do that.

Although, if I recall, you own a Mac, right? That'll be a little more problematic. I'm coming at it as if you have a PC desktop, which is easier to open up and install various parts.

[DeadManReedeemed]

MacBook Pro 15" inch

Darn.

[ArchAngel]

Yeah, I'm not sure about how to upgrade your hard drive to an SSD for laptops, not to mention mac books. I imagine if so, Apple would be selling a SSD that you'd have to replace your current hard drive.

You'd probably just have to buy a new laptop.

[Deepfreeze32]

If he has a 2012 model Pro, then yes. Only Apple can do anything with it.

If not, it's a cinch if you know your way with a screwdriver and some cloning software. Not counting data transfer time (Well over 4 hours due to having 300 GB of data), replacement on mine took about 30 minutes. Easy, and you don't void your warranty (Provided you follow Apple's instructions for hard drive replacement, found in chapter 3 of the link)

[M_Unlimited]

Well Jay is a little gun shy now, I think his SSD fried last night only a few months old. He backed it up minutes beforehand because he was planning on putting Windows 8 on it. We both keep our profiles on SATA HDDs

What Windows did he have on it before? and what is he going to do with the old windows?

[ccgr]

Windows 7..back it up and replace it with 8

[M_Unlimited]

Windows 7..back it up and replace it with 8

So your not going to sell it? or can you with all the new security now lol?

[ccgr]

We'll still use it.