Upgrade to a solid-state hard disk

You may not think of your PC as being mechanical, but the noise it makes every time you switch it on suggests otherwise. The components inside heat up and need cooling with fans, and perhaps the most precise mechanical instrument in your PC, if not in your house, is the hard disk.

Several glass discs inside spin more than 5,000 times per minute while a device the width of a human hair scurries back and forth across them reading files, folders and programs from the surface.

Although modern hard disks are impressively tough – they work inside a laptop, after all – anything this complicated and mechanical has the potential to go wrong. And, although they are fast, mechanical hard disks are still relatively inefficient when it comes to finding your files.

Recently, though, a new alternative has appeared: the Solid State Disk, or SSD for short. These work in the same way as a USB memory key: data is stored on a series of memory chips, connected to your PC internally. With no moving parts they are far more resilient, and much quicker. Running from an SSD, Windows can often start in seconds.

SSDs are becoming more affordable all the time, so today you can buy one for less than £100. Beginners may find it difficult to install one, but if you are a confident computer user read on and we will explain how to do it in a simple step-by-step manner.

Benefits of SSDs
Before we explain how to install an SSD, though, you might be wondering whether it’s worth the trouble. If you are happy with the speed of your PC, the answer might be no – but if your computer’s a bit sluggish, an SSD could help. Here’s why.

It’s easy to imagine that hard disk speed only affects your computer when you are copying files, perhaps from one location to another, or from your PC to another device. But, in fact, your computer’s hard disk is being accessed almost constantly.

One of the most intense periods of its activity comes when you start Windows – it needs to read thousands of files quickly to get the operating system up and running. Using an SSD will cut the time this takes drastically.

Over time, the way data is written to a mechanical hard disk becomes increasingly random, which means you either tolerate a slower PC or defragment the files. You will never need to do this with an SSD.

Your hard disk gets lots of use once Windows is going, too. If you load big applications, such as a photo-editing tool, your hard disk has to refer to thousands of files.

An SSD makes this quicker, so programs start up faster. And, if your computer runs short on memory, it will start moving data from memory to your hard disk – something that is far slower on a hard disk than an SSD.