For the last year or so, I have transitioned from all my personal computers from regular hard disk drives (HDD) to solid-state drives (SSD) for the primary drives. The main reason was because I wanted the smartphone and tablet experience in which applications and processes load instantly or in a few seconds, including operating system boot.

I’m superbly pleased I did so and for my personal computers, I probably won’t ever have a HDD as a primary drive meaning the disk where the OS is stored (e.g. Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc.) is stored.

In addition, unlike HDDs, SSDs don’t get significantly slower as storage fills up, and I don’t have to do as much routine disk maintenance especially in Windows such as disk cleanup and disk defragment.

Most SSDs are 2.5 inches and work both for desktops and laptops; however, special mounting hardware maybe required to make them fit properly in desktops since desktop towers typically have 3.5 inch bays/enclosures, not 2.5 inch ones.

The only downside is that SSDs are substantially more costly than HDDs … as of the time of this posting, a 512gb SSD can cost around 200 USD. Overall, I believe the convenience and productivity gains are much worth it especially for business.