One of the cheapest ways to increase the performance of your computer or laptop is to increase the RAM. And another affordable and easy way is to install a faster hard drive.
Technology moves at such a pace that the hard drive capability and maximum capacity have increased since the time you bought your computer or laptop. Fortunately, new hard drives are relatively affordable and has become a good option to increase performance.
How much space needed for Windows 10 or iOS 12?
Even before you can start your apps or start playing your favourite game the operating system, obviously, need to be loaded.
Apple iOS 12 requires 2.24GB and Windows 10 requires 12GB for the 64-bit OS and 16GB for the 32-bit OS.
By modern standard, that is actually very little, considering that flash drives are even bigger than that.
That is good news because now you can start considering using a SATA SSD (Solid State Drives) for your operating system and apps and then keep your standard disc hard drive for file and media storage.
For instance, since an OS takes up little space, you can use a SATA 120GB SSD – currently on sale for only R429 – for your OS and apps. Booting up with an SSD takes as little as 10 seconds compared to a HDD boot-up time of 30 to 40 seconds.
By the way, compared to an HDD an SSD also opens up files quicker, uses less electricity, generates less heat and has better reliability.
Big storage space
If you’re looking to up or add to your existing HDD, Essential IT Solutions offers Seagate and Western Digital standard internal SATA hard drives with sizes range from 500GB to a massive 12TB (although, Samsung does offer a 30TB HDD, available on request from us), with prices ranging from just over R700 to almost 9 big smacker for the 12TB HDD.
If your computer chassis bays are already full, consider external hard drives. They are available in 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives from 500GB up to 6TB. The brands are Adata, Apacer, Seagate, Transcend, Verbatim and Western Digital.
Go even faster!
Need to go even faster?! Consider NVMe (Non Volatile Memory Express) technology in the M.2 SSD format. This is a SSD module that fits into your PCIe slot and – yum, yum – delivers speeds up to 4GB per second! (HDD speed usually is 150MB/s and SATA SSD is up to 555MB/s.)
Sizes range from 256GB to 2TB and while pricing on the top of the range m.2 SSDs is on the higher side the price for the smaller m.2 SSDs are almost similar to SATA SSD prices.
Our pick of the bunch is the Samsung 970 PRO 1TB m.2 SSD. It costs over 7 grand (or R669 per month through mobicred) but the performance is reflected in the pricing, with read/write speeds up to 3,500/2,700 MB/s, up to 1 200 TBW (Terrabyte Written) usage and a 5-year limited warranty.
m.2 SSDs are available in the Internal SSD category.
Laptop SSD
SSDs are small factor drives, meaning any of the SATA SSDs will fit into your laptop hard drive bay. Thus, if your laptop is still running on a disc hard drive, consider a SSD to increase your laptop performance.
Note, we can clone your existing HDD data (including the OS) onto your new SSD; all your folders and files will be as it was on the HDD.
So, if increased speed is your new target, waste no time to point your browser to the Specials or whatsapp us on 081 395 8776.
