If you want to speed up your laptop and lengthen its battery life then swap the hard disk drive out for a speedy solid-state drive.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are all the rage. Since, SSDs have no moving parts, they are more shock-resistant and rugged than standard hard drives and that makes them perfect for laptops that get bumped around a bit.
Though their write performance varies, they offer great read performance, also, random small writes can be very fast, but long writes of large block data can be slower than on traditional hard drives ((as you might have with continuous video recording).
But, upgrading to a solid-state drive is not as easy as purchasing a drive and throwing it in your PC. Here are a few tips for picking out the right model, making sure that it will work with your setup, carefully cloning your old drive, and keeping the install process clean and painless. (Don’t forget to read “How to Switch to a Solid-State Drive” for more advice.)
Solid-state drives come in two major types: MLC (multi-level cell) and SLC (single-level cell). An MLC drive stores two or more bits per cell and an SLC SSD stores data as one bit per flash memory cell. As a result, MLCs are less expensive than SLCs at the same capacity point, since you require fewer physical flash memory components for greater capacity. The downside is that MLC drives are slower than SLC units, though usually still much faster than regular hard drives.
You’ll typically find SLC drives in workstation-class environments and data centers, where the greater cost is mitigated by gains in reliability and productivity.
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