What upgrades should I be considering

[grandadfatboy]

May I start by apologising for my absence from the forum. This has been due to some health, family and work issues, which has allowed me very little personal time. Due to a knee injury I'm now on very restricted work hours, which I'm pleased to report has given me more spare time than I have been used to in a long while.:D

 

With this new freedom, I've started to use, explore and enjoy my digital camera. I has discovered that my camera can record full HD video, which gives very good results, more so when I remember to use my tripod. As a consequence I now have quite a few photo and video files that need editing.

 

I currently run a dual boot setup (full system specs below) running Windows XP and Windows 7, both of which will no longer be required on this machine. Windows XP and Windows 7 share equal partitions on a 500gb Sata HDD and I also have a 2TB Sata HDD which I use for data storeage, photographs, video, music, etc. I am looking to upgrade to the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements, Pinnacle Studio and Windows 10.

 

So to my questions.

 

1. Do I format the hard drive which at the moment is home to Windows XP & Windows 7 and install Windows 10 there?

 

2. Do I consider a SSD on which to install Windows 10?

 

3. Do I need to upgrade the hardware currently installed on my pc, should I decide to install a SSD? ie, cpu. m/b, ram, graphics card, etc?

 

4. Should I be considering upgrading my data drive to SSHD and again what extra hardware would be required to do so?

 

 

Thank you for reading and your advice and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

ATB

Ian

 

 

My present system is:

 

Operating System

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1

CPU

AMD FX-6300 9 °C

Vishera 32nm Technology

RAM

8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 803MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard

Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. GA-78LMT-S2P (Socket M2) 28 °C

Graphics

Standard Monitor (1280x1024@75Hz)

2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 6670 (XFX Pine Group) 33 °C

Storage

465GB Hitachi HDT725050VLA360 ATA Device (SATA) 34 °C

1863GB MD20000-ALDW-RO ATA Device (SATA) 25 °C

Optical Drives

TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224DB ATA Device

Audio

Realtek High Definition Audio

[KenB]

Hi - good to hear from you again :)

 

You have 2 hard-drives available at the moment

500gb Sata HDD and I also have a 2TB Sata HDD

 

1. Do I format the hard drive which at the moment is home to Windows XP & Windows 7 and install Windows 10 there?

This is the obvious option unless you decide to go for an SSD drive.

Two questions I have - have you had any problems with this drive ?

Have you run a diagnostic test on the drive ?

 

It would be a waste of time installing Win10 only to discover that the drive is failing.

You don't say how old it is.

 

2. Do I consider a SSD on which to install Windows 10?

SSD drives have come down in price but are still relatively expensive.

Those people who have them sing their praises.

You would find that your system boots up quicker and that software loads and runs faster as access times are far quicker than SATA drives.

With no moving parts SSDs are quieter and also would be expected to last longer.

Larger SSDs do tend to be very expensive. 500 GB should be OK for most purposes.

If you are not too bothered about waiting a little for the system to load etc. then save your money.

You may want to take a look here - click here

It is a few years old - but most of the information holds good.

 

3. Do I need to upgrade the hardware currently installed on my pc, should I decide to install a SSD? ie, cpu. m/b, ram, graphics card, etc?

No - you should be ok to just plug-and-play.

A SSD uses the SATA connections on your motherboard. If you have SATA 3 use this.

If you connect the SSD to SATA 2 it will still run but you may not see the full benefits - it will still be considerably faster than the SATA hard drive.

 

 

4. Should I be considering upgrading my data drive to SSHD and again what extra hardware would be required to do so?

 

SSHDs where introduced by Seagate as a cross between SSD and HDD.

The implication was that you get SSD performance at something like HDD cost.

I can't see how this can be true.

They may be a little faster than HDDs but they will not match SSDs for performance.

If you a choosing then I suggest either SSD or stay with HDD.

 

You may find this article useful - click here

 

Hope this helps :)

[grandadfatboy]

Hi Ken and thank you for the reply.

 

The desktop was specifically intended for editing photographs, video and music and to that end it has been ideal. I just haven't had the time and the dedicated workspace for my desktop became our daughters bedroom when she moved back home. She has since moved out and my wife and are selling up and down sizing, which effectively allows me to retire and spend more time on my hobbies, hence the possibility to upgrade.

 

In answer to your questions;

 

1. The drive seems absolutely fine, although I have not run a diagnostics on it, but will do so this afternoon, seeing as it's still accessible, much to my wife's annoyance.

 

2. To be honest the desktop does take a little time to fire up compared to my wife's Windows 10 laptop.

 

3. It's great news that any upgrade is plug and play. A diagnostic check of the hard drive will indicate if I need to upgrade or not. If an upgrade is required, then I will probably go for SSD.

 

4. I will run a diagnostic on my data drive to give that a health check too. Again the drive is not showing any signs of issues.

 

I just wanted to check that if I do upgrade I was going in the right direction and not going backwards.

 

Thank you Ken.

 

ATB

Ian