Is your laptop feeling sluggish?
Is your laptop feeling sluggish? You’re not the only one! After using a laptop for a few years, many people experience their machine slowing down. This can be caused by several things, the most common being an ageing hard drive where the moving parts within the drive gradually wear out.
So, what can you do to regain performance and prevent potential data loss?
The easiest option is to replace the mechanical hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD). Not only is this a much cheaper option than replacing the entire laptop, but will provide a huge boost to overall performance. The days of waiting minutes for your laptop to boot are gone, instead you’ll be waiting mere seconds.
Why should you upgrade to an SSD?
An SSD is the single most effective upgrade you can give to your laptop. Why? The difference lays in the advantage of stationary parts versus moving parts, a standard hard drive contains a physical, spinning ‘platter’ and a reading ‘head’, much like a record player. It takes time for the platter to spin and for the head to move back and forth to read whichever information is stored there. Conversely, an SSD contains no moving parts and relies on electric signals to read and write data.
SSDs have become more and more common, and this has been reflected in their price which has dropped substantially over the last couple of years.
So, how fast is an SSD compared to a mechanical hard drive?
Tests have shown that the fastest SSDs can read and write data up to 400 times faster than their mechanical counterparts. Sequential read speeds are in excess of 250MB/s, and sequential write speeds reach an eyewatering 240MB/s.
See the image below for test results!
What else can be done to speed up my laptop?
Aside from upgrading your hard drive, there are many other ways to help increase performance levels on your laptop. Many of these options are free, and easy to implement without visiting a repair or service provider.
- Download CCleaner. This is a great tool for removing temporary and unneeded files from your laptop, resulting in increased space and enhanced performance.
- Uninstall unused programs. Are there programs on your laptop that you don’t use? Uninstall them! They’re taking up space, and some of them may start when your laptop switches on, taking up valuable memory and CPU resources.
- Install antivirus software. Viruses, malware and trojans can significantly slow down your laptop, so ensuring you’re free of them is very important.
As an extra consideration, it’s likely that your laptop could be fitted with additional memory (also known as RAM), which is another budget friendly way to improve overall performance.
