Thanks for the explanation! I didn't know that.

SSDs make a huge difference at this point. Definitely worth the extra buck

Ooooooooh great, dt has thrown a spanner in the works and just when I had made a decision. I gonna have along talk with my builder:)

Tell me dt, are you saying that the OS could be destroyed and need reinstalling just because of this?

depends if you want to pay a bit more for a faster system, I have 2 ssd for my pc

The system I get will be fast enough and all my games will be played from HDD and not SSD.

One more vote for an SSD+HDD combo. Just put the OS on the SSD and the other things elsewhere. Maybe move one game that's been experiencing loading times to the SSD... (oh crap I just realized I've been unneccesarily experiencing loading times in one game I've been playing the past two weeks.)

Don't forget to leave a decent chunk of empty space in the SSD for memory swap file. Ideally you'll have plenty of RAM, but when that RAM is not enough you'll experience some swap and you'll want it to be as fast as unnoticeable. You can't have that with an HDD.

Depending on the game, loading times and stuttering can be significantly reduced if the game is on an SSD. Don't make the mistake to buy one and then don't use it because you are afraid to lower the life expectancy. I don't know what size you have in mind, but if it is at least 250 GB, there should be plenty of space for a few games once in a while.

Unless you get a dumb model with no RAM on it which is not reserving a bit of the system RAM for itself either, an SSD should last like 15 years or more for home use. Not many magnetic hard disks last that long.
I look at prices here and a cheaper 2TB SSD costs about twice as much as a 2TB HD. In this day I would no longer put any programs on an HD but family videos and pictures and other documents are fine unless they are accessed often.
A year and a half ago my choice was an HD for myself but SSDs cost only a quarter as much now and that tips the scales for me the other way.

If you want extra space (which doesn't cost arm and leg), HDD.
Otherwise, SSD. Or both, SSD for a primary OS drive and HDD as a secondary.

I have two laptops in use (both used for gaming too), one has purely HDDs, the other has only a SSD. I am not seeing the "unbelievable" benefits with SSD that some people say. Yes yes, Windows loads up faster as do bigger games (in case they are indeed installed on a SSD and not a secondary bigger HDD), but in the end it doesn't matter that much to me if loading some game takes e.g. 15 seconds instead of 4 seconds.

Each to his own, but I feel the claims that "SSD is the best upgrade ever for your PC!" are pure plain simple bullshit. In fact, I personally feel they are almost a downgrade, considering you have to put up with smaller drives (or indeed pay lots of moneys for a bigger SSD).

I'd much much MUUUCH rather use any extra money to e.g. buy more RAM (up to 16GB at least, in case you have less), a faster GPU, more HDD space... and maybe after that a faster SSD.

But as said, to each his own.

With laptops you don't generally really have a choice, they all come with a SSD as their primary drive by default. Maybe if they have a secondary hard drive bay, it might be able to hold a HDD.

My (work) laptop has a 500GB SSD, and that's it. I don't think I can even add a second drive to it (except external USB drives of course).


That hasn't been my experience at all. I am currently using SSD on one laptop and HDD on another, and the difference is pffft meh in everyday usage, including gaming. Even the "but Windows loads up so faster!" is irrelevant as I normally load up Windows once per day, so I couldn't care less if the start up takes 7 seconds or 30 seconds.

That's a surprisingly viable approach though. I've had my OS drive taped to the lid of my thinkpad since I got it a few years ago.

Because you have little control of things on Home, so good luck tweaking out, and having those tweaks last after each forced update too. Some options have been removed from Pro too (and others only ever existed on Enterprise), but there's still quite a hefty difference.
But, of course, Win 10 is dreadful due to this taking away of control from the user either way you go about it. Dread the prospect of next year myself, as 10 is not an option.

Edit: Specifically, if you do go with 10 (*shudder*), you'll want Pro for some control of updates (still intolerably little, but way more than Home) and group policy (which may be presented as a business feature, but ends up being necessary just for those tweaks you want to do). Bitlocker for encryption (now that they apparently made it work on single files too, not just whole drives anymore) and Hyper-V for VMs may also be handy if you think you may use those.
I'd second that combo, Samsung for SSD and WD Black for HDD. A tad hard to justify the Pro now though, since they reduced the warranty for it to 5 years, same as the Evo. Used to be 10 in previous series. Still has more writes though, and either way the values are past what you'd normally use. And that test that was linked to, from back in 2013 too, shows how much further than the rated values they can go anyway.
Damn, reaching into the PBs, and even the first to fail going several times above the rated limit! That's insane. But yeah, it confirms the sudden death thing, which HDDs don't typically have.
Well, I'm not dt, but no.
For one, the idea is that SSDs (or anything using flash) can't overwrite a sector as a HDD can, but must first erase it. So when you delete something off a HDD what happens is just that the entry in the allocation table gets erased, but the data remains there until those sectors are written with something else (hence the easy recovery too). A SSD will also do that at first, but if the data remains written when those sectors will need to be written again, the write operation will be twice as slow, since it'd need to first erase the old data and then write the new. So you have the trim function, which if enabled (and it normally is) will tell the SSD which sectors are no longer considered in use and it'll erase them when it's not otherwise busy. So, whenever it happens, either when the sector needs to be written again or as part of this maintenance work, that erasure counts as writing, doubling the amount actually written on the disk.
Also, when sectors will trigger wear leveling warnings, after a certain number of writes (again, that means a LONG time under regular usage scenarios), that data will likely be moved to "fresher" sectors, again adding to writes without you actually writing to the disk, this being done internally by SSD, without the user (or the OS for that matter) noticing the difference, assuming it doesn't fail in the process.

Oh, PS, another difference between SSDs and HDDs: SSDs have firmware. Firmware has updates. Not required to install them of course, but some may correct bugs or what not. Updating a SSDs firmware will normally wipe it (or even if you try not to, if possible, there's no guarantee there won't be data loss), hence SSDs come with utilities to make image backups and restore them after such an update. Normally it should be hassle-free, just have the space on another drive to store that image and it'll be put back as if nothing happened. But, of course, scary prospect. I haven't updated mine's firmware for one, and I don't even have the OS on it (was purchased quite recently).

Modern HDD are very fast but would bottleneck any modern system. If you do nothing on pc but game, you can get away with HDD, any other use -> SSD, even browsing speed is faster.

I would go for SSD even for the games disc ,not HDD As someone call them "spinning disc fossil". They use far more power and do some noise (modern ones are almost inaudible with a usual desktop pc).

Yes, SSD have limitations, like endurance writing (it´s not a flaw) but is something only concerning pro market (data centers etc), Pro SSD are better in this regard.
However there's a big problem with SSD, like any other flash memory, not correctly shut down the pc might corrupt the data, like constant power surges. A good power supply prevents this for the most part (Dont buy a desktop with a cheaper one, preferably to buy better with less watts)

Not to scare you because HDD are far worse. Anyone here that use computer for a long time and never had a disc failure?
Well I remember 1 particulary with weeks worth of simulation work. And I lost all my porno as well, thats a bummer!

There are still a lot of older models available here that have 500-1000gb non-SSD HDs. Depending on price I might go for one, that is depending on what I can find in the 14'' range. I don't want to spend too much since it's mostly going to be for work.

My newest build has 3 SSDs. I dual boot and decided to make each OS on their own. I'll breakdown and get an HDD for storage. But the system is a year old, I'm not in any big hurry. After having an SSD, going back to HDD is tough.