If you're a person who favors speed, efficiency and quiet computer operation, the SSD drives have come down
greatly in price lately. I just bought a small (120 gig) drive yesterday for less than $18. That by today's standards sounds tiny, but if you're using a drive only for your operating system and support-type programs like Word, Excel, Acrobat, etc only and storing stuff elsewhere it is plenty. If you feel you need more, I'd suggest getting a 1tb spin drive for backups, etc and set it to turn off when not in use. That way it will be quieter and it will last a lot longer. And in line with this, thumb drives (USB sticks) have come down a lot also. MicroCenter is an excellent place to buy these (or any computer or part) and they're happy to sell online and ship. I've dealt with these folks for many years and give them a large thumbs up for customer satisfaction and competitive pricing. Here are some of their current USB drive (3.1 version) prices: 256 gig ($29.99), 128 gig ($12.99), 64 gig ($6.49). So you can use a smaller SSD drive and store anything sensitive on a USB stick on the cheap...very cheap, actually.
Having used an SSD drive for about a month now (I opted for the 240 gig drive which was $28), I heartily endorse it. Even with a sluggish program like Windows 10, it will boot up on my old computer in 30 seconds or so. Opening MS Word now takes me apx 2 to 3 seconds. I hear the fan cooling the case and power supply, but gone is the whine and chatter that used to be the hard drive. In ways it makes my 10+ year old dual-core seem like a new computer.
Plus...a big plus in my opinion...you folks using Windows 10 can reinstall it for free and without worry or hassle of validating the copy (as was required in the older versions). Today you just get a blank USB drive, download the Windows 10 installation media file (do it here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10). Back up anything you want to save, make a list of programs you'll need to re-install (you'll lose the old ones), install the new drive, make sure your PC is set to boot from a USB stick (you can go into "setup" when you first start the computer to determine this) and start it. It will take care of everything including some updates and it will contact Microsoft servers to verify you have an authentic copy of Windows 10.
What if I'm still using Windows 7 you might ask? You can do the same thing, but you will need to have your authentication number so you can enter it when prompted. It is pretty slick and if you're considering changing to an SSD drive, I would heartily suggest you install a nice fresh new copy of Windows rather than use the clone programs out there. Some are ok and some are in my opinion pure trash that will leave you with a copy of Windows that limps along and has issues and corrupted files. Not the path to greater speed and efficiency. My experience has been the Windows Troubleshooting programs can't solve these, either. Good luck. If you have questions, please let me know.
