The PC thread

[faizoff]

I'm trying to remember when I bought my current PC, but yeah probably 2012 sounds about right, and no full reboots since then. Similarly, I have loads of settings and software that I definitely can't be bothered to sort out all over again from scratch unless it's absolutely necessary (e.g. buying a new computer).

And yeah, still running mostly well, just a bit slow to load up and shut down, which is one of the main reasons I was tempted by Windows 10 but clearly that was a failure.

Do you have your current OS installed on an SSD or the regular mechanical HDD?

[ariich]

Er, just the HDD I believe.

[faizoff]

Well goes without saying the biggest and most impacting upgrade you'll ever see is with an SSD. I recently put an SSD on my father inlaws old Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz Dell desktop and even with the 2 GB of RAM, the win 7 installation took 15 mins total and his boot up time is like 30 secs.
I think you should be able to clone your HDD and port it over to an SSD using several of the free migration tools available. I think the trial version of Acronis will work too. Definitely worth a shot.

[cramx3]

SSD for the OS is definitely the way to go 

I have 2x 400GB Intel SSDs in a RAID0 for my OS and applications.  Then a third 400GB SSD for video games.  And then a bunch of 2TB HDDs for media storage.

[ariich]

Interesting, just read a couple of articles about SSDs, seems that having the OS on one can be good. Any kind of sensible capacity is insanely expensive though!

[faizoff]

My current setup is the OS and some main programs reside on a 128 GB Crucial SSD which at the time I bought for $185  and to be fair was a deal at the time. The rest of the media is spread across 14 TB in various HDDs.  Boot times and loading times are fantastic and I'm incredibly spoiled by this speed. Makes it hard to work on anything else.

A 256 GB SSD of the top brand (Crucial or Samsung) can be had for around $80 or less when they come on sales. Well worth the investment.

[cramx3]

Yea, the prices have come waaayyyy down, very affordable now for a decent sized SSD

[Nick]

I'm planning to (finally) build my own PC in December, and although I already have a ton of storage, and don't need to buy any, I plan on getting a 128 gig SSD just for my OS and most used programs/games.

[faizoff]

Even though 128 gb sounds like it's enough they start to fill up fast and in no time you'll be clearing out space frequently.

[Nick]

Even though 128 gb sounds like it's enough they start to fill up fast and in no time you'll be clearing out space frequently.

I have 8TBs of storage. Space is not an issue. Like I said, it's only for critical stuff.

[faizoff]

I was referring to the 128 GB for the OS, you'll find that you'll start placing more and more programs on the SSD as they load super fast. I know for me I place VMs on the SSD and several video editing programs and I have all scratch disks pointing to the SSD. Just giving some insight on my experience as I too thought the same that 128 GB should be only for the critical and most important stuff.

[Bolsters]

If you're going to be playing games, something bigger than 120GB would not go to waste, infact I'd recommend it. I've got a 120GB SSD and while I haven't had any space issues so far in the last 3 years that I've had it, games have gotten a lot bigger recently. A couple of things I've been thinking of buying are in the 60GB+ range, and I can't find enough things to delete from my SSD to make space for them - keeping only things that I must have, I can only manage to get 56GB of free space. I generally like to have 2 games on at a time aswell, so it's even more disappointing for me. If I don't buy a new SSD before I buy one of those games, I'm going to have to install them on the conventional HDD, and I'm not looking forward to doing that.

[Nick]

I'll keep all that in mind, and see what prices are like in a few months once I'm pulling the trigger on these things.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

I also have an 128gb ssd for my OS, I partitioned mine so that 60gb is reserved for the OS and the rest for critical stuff other than that I reserve it only for my OS. I have a 250gb ssd for heavy programs like video editing and games. Then I have a 1TB HHD for storage.

[Calvin6s]

The price difference between 128 and 256gb SSD is not all that much these days.  I'd go 256.  I have a 128 and it filled up fast enough that I had to take some time to rearrange things.

Data is on the mega terabyte conventional HDDs

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

A question: If I run heavy programs and games from the OS drive wouldn't that slow things down no matter the disk seize instead of always having the OS run on a dedicated drive?

[BlobVanDam]

A question: If I run heavy programs and games from the OS drive wouldn't that slow things down no matter the disk seize instead of always having the OS run on a dedicated drive?

I don't think it will make much of a difference in practice on an SSD. And if I had an SSD, I'd want all of the programs on it too, because a slow SSD would still easily beat a fast mechanical drive.

A 128gb SSD would be way too small as an OS drive for me, and I have zero games. I have my current partition at 200gb and that's struggling, and that's just Windows 7 and the basic programs I need. It would be fine if it was just the OS, but with programs and/or games, I'd go at least 256gb.

[cramx3]

The problem is the OS grows over time with updates.  I had 2x 60GB SSDs in RAID0 so a virtual 120GB SSD drive for my OS and I didn't install any games besides Battlefield (since that took so long to load on a mechanical drive) and no other apps, I was at capacity on the drive in a few years from the OS growing (well BF did too). 

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

A question: If I run heavy programs and games from the OS drive wouldn't that slow things down no matter the disk seize instead of always having the OS run on a dedicated drive?

I don't think it will make much of a difference in practice on an SSD. And if I had an SSD, I'd want all of the programs on it too, because a slow SSD would still easily beat a fast mechanical drive.

Yea probably dosen't do any big changes but i've have to say it's very handy when you wanna reinstall your OS because I never have to reinstall anything given all my programs and games are on seperate disks. Also steam is very handy when it comes to reinstalling important files that may be located on your main drive, you basically just start the game and it instantly recognize any missing files.

[Calvin6s]

Yea probably dosen't do any big changes but i've have to say it's very handy when you wanna reinstall your OS because I never have to reinstall anything given all my programs and games are on seperate disks.

You don't have problems with possible missing registry changes the game install made that won't be there when the OS drive is wiped?

What you are talking about is the main reason I got a 2nd HDD in the first place, but for data.  Documents, spreadsheets, pictures, movies, audio and whatever else windows program allows me to point to the data drive.  There is still a short list I have for things I need to save off the OS drive before I wipe (most obvious being the desktop).

I've had to reinstall much less since Win7.  In fact, I haven't had to yet.

[BlobVanDam]

Even if my programs were on a separate drive, I'd still have to reinstall them all if I reinstalled Windows because of copy protection and registry keys. Not sure how modern games react to that kind of thing, but the games I play are ok because they all predate any real copy protection, or are emulated.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Yea probably dosen't do any big changes but i've have to say it's very handy when you wanna reinstall your OS because I never have to reinstall anything given all my programs and games are on seperate disks.

You don't have problems with possible missing registry changes the game install made that won't be there when the OS drive is wiped?

What you are talking about is the main reason I got a 2nd HDD in the first place, but for data.  Documents, spreadsheets, pictures, movies, audio and whatever else windows program allows me to point to the data drive.  There is still a short list I have for things I need to save off the OS drive before I wipe (most obvious being the desktop).

I've had to reinstall much less since Win7.  In fact, I haven't had to yet.

Not that i've noticed. Steam seems to fix things like that, the last time I reinstalled my OS the only thing I had to do was fix all the necessary drivers and then boot up steam. It repair itself when you boot up and so does the games. Surprisingly easy. As long as you don't have steam on your OS drive.

[Podaar]

I put one of these in my latest build. The best of both worlds and pretty reasonably priced. I have the OS (Win 7) and all the programs loaded on it. All the user files and data is kept on a separate HDD.

I can highly recommend it.

[cramx3]

Nice SSD!

[Calvin6s]

While we are talking SSDs and Win7 8 and 10 ... There is one thing that bothers me about my current setup.

Every now and then, I will go into Windows Explorer (or file open from a program) and I will get a "program not responding" that seems to correspond to a HDD grab (usually going from directory to directory).  It is more of a relatively short pause that always gets back on track, but it is definitely annoying.

I've taken off all the power saving settings for the HDDs via Control Panel, but it still does it every so often.  It isn't that it is a massive delay, just that with the computer specs (SSD and last gen intel), it doesn't seem like it should be a problem.

I've tried to look for a solution in Event Viewer, but either it isn't there or I'm just not looking in the right spot.

I could see it being a problem of background disk defrag, although that is disabled for the SSD so that shouldn't be the problem.

Anybody else go through this?

[cramx3]

I know my computer does that with my data hard drive after a period of not using the data and then say playing a video, theres a slight pause as you wait for the disk to spin up.  But sounds like you are not experiencing that with the SSD.

[faizoff]

I remember having this kind of issue with my very first SSD a Crucial C300 64 GB and I remember I had to install the drivers suggested by the Intel Driver Utility and that took care of the issue. Not sure if yours is any way related. I think the native drivers that windows loaded had some issue with it so had to use the one made by Micron.

[Calvin6s]

I'd have to make some more controlled observations (although it doesn't happen when you want it to as per Murphy's Law), but it obviously happens with my data drives (not SSD).  I can't be sure that my SSD is a culprit.  I could say it is a culprit because when I load Microsoft Excel (for instance) it sometimes has a short "not responding" on initial load.  But that could be the "recents" link to the data drive.

I will try the intel driver utility (I think it used compromised java though) again.  I know I used it before.  My goto for drivers has been SlimDrivers, but the problem was around pre-SlimDrivers usage.

Anybody have a link to troubleshooting "program not responding" tutorials.  I have used Event Viewer with success in the past for other problems (mainly XP era), but I haven't even been able to find the event entry itself.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Of course one could just save up to this behemoth:

https://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2015/08/14/samsungs-record-breaking-hard-drive-fits-16-terabytes-into-a-2-5-inch-ssd/

[faizoff]

Yesterday I got my Crucial M500 480 GB SSD. It was a re-certified unit that I got for $120. I already had Win 7 installed on another 128 GB Crucial M4 SSD so just disconnected that drive and installed a Win 8 Pro installation I bought at the time of release for like $40. The process of installing win 8 with 170 updates to win 8.1 with another 35 updates to finally win 10 took a few hours I'd say about 3 which considering is really really fast considering the amount of data downloaded (probably in the 10s of GBs) and had to redownload win 10 as the first installation was corrupt. I have to say it's been quite a smooth transition which I was sorta expecting but didn't think it would be this flawless, as least so far.

I haven't had to install a single driver. I don't know if that's due to my signing into my windows account and having them synced all three times and it somehow saving all my device drivers etc.. regardless I'm pleasantly surprised that on the first clean install of win 8 I had all drivers loaded by default and I checked everything was working. This includes my wireless solar powered Logitech keyboard K750, my bluetooth earphones, all USB 3.0 controllers (non-native for Sandy Bridge CPUs), etc.. Only hitch was that AMD catalyst center wasn't installed on 8 and for one of my monitors that was connected via HDMI I couldn't adjust the overscan ratio. But 8.1 loaded it and that was solved. Another minor bump in the road was that I couldn't first do a clean install of win 8 on this new drive. I mean I could but it wouldn't activate online saying that my version of windows would only support an upgrade and not a clean install. Well a simple registry tweak took care of that and I was on my way.

It's a strange feeling using win 10 on my desktop as my main OS where I'm settling in all software and power options, assigning default directories for music, movies, setting up Plex for all devices. Loading up additional server hosting software. Played Crysis on steam on ultra settings and that worked great. I've had win 7 on it since the time of purchase and although have tried several OSes on this machine, they were all on VMs to tinker with and none of them were my main setup. So it's a weird feeling having a new OS on the main desktop.

I haven't encountered too many bugs with win 10 yet but it's still too early. I thought I'd hate sitting through the whole process of trying to re-configure my main desktop but I was wrong, I'm loving it so far.

[faizoff]

There was another sale on re-certified Crucial SSDs, I grabbed another 480 GB ($100) and a 960 GB($180) one. Not sure what I'm going to do with so many SSDs haha. Probably load one on my wife's laptop and give one to my brother.

[reneranucci]

Hello everyone! I'm planning to replace my laptop computer and at the same time develop more computer skills, trying some things I haven't done before.

I'm debating between two ASUS models, very similar in specifications (i7 processor, 8 GB RAM, same video processor, etc.). The first I looked at (which is, overall, a nicer laptop and includes an optical drive which I still find valuable) has a 1 TB HDD 5400 rpm. I tried to upgrade it to a 7200 rpm but that would also force me to buy it from a seller that has has it a higher price. Overall it would be around $1,050. This is the safe, comfortable option.

The second one comes with a 256 SSD plus internal expansion space for a 7mm HDD. If I buy this one, I would also buy a 1 TB internal HDD and install it myself, plus an external CD/DVD drive. This is the "high risk, maybe high reward" option:
- Overall cost would be around $930, actually freeing some cash to get the MS Office license.
- I will have a SSD, which is becoming the standard, so I can feel good about myself having cutting edge technology. Besides, my work laptop has a SSD and I can tell the difference in speed/reliability is vast.
- It will force me to open the laptop to install the internal HDD (yes, voiding the guarantee in the process), learn to manage 2 hard drives efficiently, create partitions, etc. Everything comes down to me being able to install the HDD easily following youtube videos. Do you think this is too risky?

I want the computer for the usual office stuff, installing and learning Ubuntu, and processing some heavy files for data analytics. I'm not a gamer at all but I have a Steam account and some games that would be nice to play (and that I don't play because my laptop overheats/freezes). Any input would be greatly appreciated 

[faizoff]

I think you've more or less answered your question in your post. You say you want to learn more computer skills, the 2nd option presents that opportunity to you. I don't think it's risky at all though if you're doing it for the first time when opening the laptop case it will feel a little intimidating as everything is usually very tightly secured and usually snaps in place. One site I highly recommend is ifixit.com if you want to disassemble things. Hopefully they'll have the laptop you're interested in and the guides help. Creating and managing multiple partitions is no big deal these days where the majority of maintenance can be done with the native windows disk management tool.

Out of curiosity which is the Asus laptop that you're interested in for your second option? You know where my vote is if you've been reading my posts regarding SSDs. I can't recommended them enough. In fact during this weekend I'm going to replace my wife's laptop 5400 rpm hard drive with a new SSD I've bought.

[faizoff]

On another note I can't believe I waited so long (think 3 1/2 years) to update my motherboard bios for the desktop. Now that I did the boot up time is cut short ridiculously. I mean before it would POST for like a min or so and then windows would boot in 30 secs after that. Now POST happens like in 10 secs and Win 10 boots up in another 15-20 secs. Even my over clocked CPU runs a bit more smoothly without kicking in the fan right away.

[BlobVanDam]

Although I already have some computer skills, I recently had to replace a laptop HDD for the first time, and it was much less painful than I expected. I say go for it. It's not a difficult process, either on the hardware side or the software side. Just make sure the new drive will fit in the laptop in regards to thickness, and it's a straightforward process.
Software side, creating a partition (or a few) is quick and easy even using the standard Windows tools.

Plus you get the benefits of both SSD and HDD, speed and storage.