And why-you might ask-would I store all my files on my old slow drive? Because for your computer opening files is fast and easy anyway, so you don’t really gain much.
If not, you can get the same result by purchasing a drive enclosure. If your machine has extra drive bays you can re-install them and use them as storage media. Besides, configuring a new system can be lots of fun when you don’t have to watch a spinning wheel all the time.įinally, don’t throw out your old HDD. And, a clean installation ensures that your OS will be finely tuned to all your hardware, including your new SSD. So starting from scratch won’t break the bank. One of the beauties of Linux is that there are hundreds of flavors to choose from and many are free.
These days SSD’s are now just as reliable as their ancestors, and though cheaper than before, still a lot more than HDDs by about 5x to 10x per gigabyte. Initially, I was skeptical I’d heard stories about random bit flips and I already knew that SSDs were expensive. This isn’t incremental change it’s a radical change. Suddenly every thing’s faster boot-ups take a 1/5th to a 1/6th of the time and programs pop into action. Over the years, I’ve tweaked lots of systems, but nothing I’ve ever done has produced such spectacular results as installing a solid-state hard drive. These days what’s usually gumming up the works is a spinning metal disc your hard disc drive.
How can I get even more performance out of my system? As technology changes so do the choke points in your system. If you do all three, you’ll get tangible though probably only an incremental improvement.
Likewise, you could also upgrade your ram or your graphics card. And many found this simple act to be a type of upgrade since Linux systems always were far more efficient in their use of resources.
Many current Linux users switched over from windows simply because they were sick of using a machine so sluggish that it was barely able run its native OS sick of spending time watching an “hour glass” icon waiting for something-anything-to happen.