My ( inherited from wife) laptop, that I only really use for iTunes /photo management needs a new hdd, but it’s been suggested that I have an ssd fitted instead, anyone done this? Or had it done?

I got a hybrid.

50% of the price. 80% of the performance. (IANAITG)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-inch-5400RPM-SATA-Drive/dp/B007NVGWV0/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1454618510&sr=8-8&keywords=hybrid+hdd

Done this a few times – ebuyer for 240gb SSD + a sata to usb lead if your copying the old hard disk – else wack it in and do a fresh install.

-<only recent issue is installing windows 10 from scratch is a right pain.>

SSD is great, don’t get me wrong, but if your just using it as a media box you won’t see much benefit, boot times will be a lot faster and windows will feel more snappy so it’s a solid upgrade that improves general user experience.. But the specific activities you’ve stated won’t really benefit.

If you are storing lots of files like music and photos then a larger capacity cheaper drive might be an option.

Depends on storage, as above the price gets scary above about 250 (was looking yesterday) as my laptop is around 1tb it’s still out.

I’ve been thinking about one of those (because I do like a decent size HD and SSDs get far too expensive) – do you find the performance really is comparable to an SSD?

Done it a few times and it is quite easy. If you want to just clone the old one then you will need some software to do the cloning and disk caddy of some sort to hold the new disk while you are copying across. Afaik the Samsung EVO disks have their own cloning software which saves you buying it and a caddy should be around a tenner

I’m in the US now and just about to press the buy button on a Samsung EVO 500gb SSD for $150 which is silly cheap!

Is there an energy saving with ssd, not having a disc spinning all the time ?

Is there an energy saving with ssd, not having a disc spinning all the time

yes, but given a HDD uses sod all energy anyway, it’s not much. You might see a little tiny benefit if running on battery.

FWIW I’m a big fan of hybrid drives. LArge capacity and cheap. They are fast for boot as the most commonly used files are automatically stored on the SSD portion. Once you’re using a prog such as Lightroom then SSD drive vs. tradtional doesn’t make much difference to editing speed, as the image is loaded into RAM for editing. Only makes a difference on export, and as I tend to just leave that to it and go and do other stuff, saving 25% of time on export isn’t worth much to me.

Thanks for the info cp – so you don’t have to do anything special to set one up, it’s all automatic, and you get most of the performance boost of an SSD?

nothing special at all, it’s all automatic. You don’t see the hdd and ssd portions, you just see one drive. The drive sorts itself out.

it takes probably 3-4 starts of the PC/MAC for it to figure out what files are commonly used and move them to the ssd portion. Boot gets quicker each start then evens out.

There’s also the option you might have of replacing the optical drive with an SSD and replacing the knackered HD with a new HD. It might be cheaper if you can find deals on separate components.

done a few – really easy if new drive is at least as big.
Pain if smaller.

In the future I would use hybrid drive.

I suppose it’s not quite plug and play, but if you’re talking about cloning the old disk to the new one (I’m not sure if the OP is), then it’s not that difficult to shrink the current disk using gparted on a boot USB – I have that along with clonezilla on my multi-boot USB, between the two of them it’s fairly straightforward to clone any disc to another one. Both of those are free tools.

Thanks for all the votes of confidence in SSHDs – hadn’t seen any comments on here from anybody who’d used one before – looks like that’s the way I’ll be going.