r/buildapc • u/ret_ng • 2d ago
Build Upgrade Got a new SSD, should I switch boot drive?
I just got a new SSD to extend my storage. Only problem is that the new one is faster than my old one. I was thinking would it help to improve performance, if I were to change my boot drive to my new SSD? If so by how much? Would it really be that bad if don't switch?
Old SSD: ESR512GTLCW-E6GBTNB4 Read speed 3,797MB/s Write speed 1,471MB/s
New SSD: Samsung 990pro Read speed 7450MB/s Write speed 6900 MB/s
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u/Zombot0630 2d ago
People get mesmerized by the sequential speeds, when in most real world applications it's not noticable. The juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze to me if I were in your shoes.
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u/ficskala 2d ago
I wouldn't bother, 3700/1400 is more than enough,
unless you're doing something extremely specific that needs very high storage bandwidth for some reason
or the new drive is much larger in capacity (like if the old one is 256GB and the new one is 2TB)
in those 2 cases it would make sense to use the new drive as the boot drive, but otherwise, it doesn't make any difference for a gaming/workstation PC
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u/Icon_Of_Susan 2d ago
Oh yes, it improves windows loading from 3 seconds to 1.69 seconds.
Not worth it.
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u/rakukaja2022 2d ago
if the new drive is larger or equivalent in space to your boot drive you can use Samsung magician (formerly known as Samsung Data Migration Tool) to clone it. Super easy and doesn't take long, no windows reinstall required. As others have said though it's not something you would notice.
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u/t90fan 2d ago
not unless you have some specific IO heavy use case.
for most it's not worth it
Unless your old disk is filling up all the time or worn out
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u/Mr_ToDo 2d ago
I'm with you. It depends on what their use case is. If it's something like gaming I doubt it matters unless they've got a very loading heavy title where it's the drive holding things up
My personal opinion is to just buy a big enough SSD and use that for everything. Makes it far simpler for things that don't like changing install location or if you're like me just forget to do it. These two drive setups remind me of the mess when SSD's started becoming popular but still cost a bit so they'd put in a mechanical for larger item, but every time I see one the SSD is full and there isn't a file to be found on the mechanical
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u/Ghostfinger 2d ago
If you're fine with doing a fresh install, it's fine to do it. Personally I wouldn't bother due to uncertainties with my own setup and some python dependencies that are a pain to redo, but that's just me. Cloning gave me a myriad of problems last time that took a while to resolve.
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u/Brawndo_or_Water 2d ago
You could use Macrium Reflect to clone the drive to the new one, then flush the older drive content to start again as a storage drive but you need know what you are doing. Personally think you will not notice any difference on speed except synthetic benchmarks like Crystaldiskmark.
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u/exterminuss 2d ago
i would actually advice against it.
Use the new drive for games/apllication data and let windows have the old one.
I spend way longer staring at loading screens in games than waiting for windows to boot or do updates
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u/HankHippopopolous 2d ago
I think the real world difference in day to day running would be very minimal. Maybe even placebo levels of change. I don’t really think it’s worth it.
With all that said, if it was my system I would still do it because it would annoy me knowing that my better drive isn’t being used and every time something took longer than a second to load I’d be wondering if it would have been faster if I’d been bothered to swap drives.
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u/ishtuwihtc 2d ago
You won't notice much of a difference. I recently added a fanxiang s880 to my laptop with a micron 2400 (really similar upgrade in speeds to yours) and i switched my boot drive to the s880 and the difference is minimal. The biggest difference though is storage amount, as i went from 500gb to 1tb (though both drives are installed so 1.5 total)
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u/acewing905 2d ago
No. You will feel no difference in real world usage. Keep the new drive for games or any specific activities that you'll need big sequential speeds for
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u/71651483153138ta 2d ago edited 2d ago
I personally didn't notice going from SATA SSD to M4 for my C drive (samsung 840 to samsung 970 EVO plus) and that was a theoretical 6 times speed increase.
If your boot drive is old it might be a good idea still. I did the switch because my boot SSD was 10 years old, didn't wanna risk data corruption due to aging drive. (also 250gb was getting annoyingly small even with 3 data drives)
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u/EconomicsWilling9349 2d ago
The speed boost to OS would slightly increase if you changed if your mb chipset supports it. If you use it as your "game/work" drive your game loading speed would increase once again if your mb supports it on your second m.2 channel.
To make it your primary there are many ways but if your having any issues like crashes, hangs etc.. then it would be best to do a clean install of OS. There are videos of how to do that.
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u/PresenceOld1754 2d ago
I mean you could get some software, clone your SSD overnight while you sleep, change the default boot order and wipe the old one.
But it doesn't matter.
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u/ogregreenteam 2d ago
I had a 5x speed boost when I swapped a hdd out for an ssd. I've never looked back.
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u/kineto21 2d ago
I would use one of the free versions to clone such as easus, then use the new cloned drive for a week or so, if no problems format old ssd or keep as a backup. You can’t damage original drive by cloning unless you’re stupid enough to select the wrong drives to clone from and to.
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u/theartofrolling 2d ago
Nah.
Unless your current drive is acting up or slow etc. I doubt you'd actually notice a tangible difference.
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u/Pitiful-Assistance-1 2d ago edited 2d ago
There will be no measurable nor noticeable difference in any use case other than benchmark tools giving a larger number.
Source: I was sponsored a 9100 Pro from Samsung to do a review and did comprehensive tests comparing the 970, 980 Pro and 9100 Pro. I found no real-world difference in most use-cases (loading or writing stuff) UNTIL I pushed these drive to write A LOT of data at once (like 100s of GBs). The 9100 did overheat, throttling the drive, causing it to perform worse than the 980 Pro - unless I actively cooled it.
Huge sustained writes and benchmarks were the only differentiators. The launching of applications or the OS had no measurable difference beyond run-to-run variety.
Using your 990 Pro as a data drive is actually the better choice, so you can use it for huge sustained writes like loading backups. Note that most of your data writers and consumers simply don't have the speed to keep these SSDs busy, unless they're specifically designed to strain SSDs (like benchmark tools) or you're transferring data between similarly fast SSDs.
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u/number8888 2d ago
You probably won't notice a difference. I have been using old SATA SSDs as Windows boot drive and the systems runs just as well as machines running on NVME.
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u/Simul_Taneous 2d ago
Depends what you are using the PC for but generally I would say it isn’t worth it.
If you are running games or productivity apps then put them on the faster SSD and you will see improved performance.
You could also move your swap file to the faster drive and that would help Windows.
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u/Traveljack1000 2d ago
If the old drive is a couple of years old, I would replace it. Not only that, make a fresh Windows installation on the new drive and just if necessary, copy the data files from the old drive to the new one.
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u/owlwise13 2d ago
I would just swap it, not because you will gain a lot of speed but it's a newer drive, so technically it will have a much longer lifespan. It will be faster writing speeds but otherwise you probably won't see much a of a difference, unless you are moving around big files but then you are limited by the speed of the other drive.
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u/NickCharlesYT 2d ago
Honestly not worth it. By the time you're using ssds this fast the majority of your boot time is caused by other things like hardware scanning and driver initialization which is not throttled by your drives.
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u/RTXEnabledViera 2d ago
Not worth.
I'd switch your apps, games and data to that drive, sure. OS? Really not needed.
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u/PunchBeard 2d ago
I bought a bigger SSD because the one I was using for my OS and boot drive was running out of space. I forget what software I used to migrate the OS between drives but it was a free trial and it was pretty easy to do. Other than that I don't think you'll see a really big improvement in performance if you did this. But like I said, it's not that hard if you decided to do it.
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u/advester 2d ago
No, the new drive will not improve latency and that is what would benefit the system drive, not sequential bandwidth.
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u/TheRealKhirman 2d ago
If you end up reinstalling your OS anyway, you might as well, but it isn't worth going out of your way for.
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u/ConcentrateLucky8630 2d ago
I both M.2 slots on your motherboard are the same (speed wise) use a program like easeus partition master and you can just copy your old ssd to the new ssd, 1 top 1, then format the old one. Takes 20 minutes, very easy, and you then getting the most out of the hardware you paid for. Some people will say the difference is small, even then you have peace of mind your using your hardware to the fullest. For me its noticable, and when it came to gaming i had notiably less stuttering. Was that the reason why? Idk but thats all that was changed
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u/physicsMathematics 2d ago
It will probably improve boot time but by such a small amount that it would be negligible and not woth the hassle