1TB internal SSD: recommendations

I've a 1TB hardrive now on a HP iCore 5 with 8GB installed RAM. I'm going to buy a new laptop. I've been told that replacing the hardrive with an internal SSD drive would make the laptop significantly faster at startup and in its general operating. Is this accurate?

If so, what sort of other spec improvements should I be looking at to improve the speed here?

Second, while I have c. 750GB used of my existing 1TB hardrive, can an SSD hold that 750GB in a compact form on, say, 500GB? It seems to be difficult to find a laptop with a 1 TB SSD installed already so I'm wondering why.

Third, what would be the best 1TB SSD to buy? What specific things, or even brand name, should I be looking for? And is there somewhere online where such things are sold at a good price?

iLikeWaffles

An SSD would vastly improve start up and performance/transfer of files.

You would have to get an SSD that would have the same capacity as the 750gb of data, just won't fit on a 500gb.

Samsung, Crucial, Kingston and SanDisk in that order would be the better SSD makes.

Monotype

An SSD would significantly boost the speed of your laptop, but a clean windows install would be recommended. Depending on what you're using your old laptop for, there could still be life in it yet.

If you're looking at getting a smaller SSD like 500GB, to alleviate the space, you could buy an enclosure for your existing hard drive and use it as external storage connected with USB. There's some very good deals at the moment for black Friday for 500GB SSDs, but I suspect that they'll bring a few better offers out on the 1TB ones on Friday itself or cyber Monday.

The reason why 1TB SSDs are harder to find in laptops is simply because it drives up the price and consumers commonly don't recognise the advantage SSDs have and will be quicker to pick up CPU and RAM differences.

amazon.co.uk's a handy place to buy from. For SSDs, my first choices would usually be Crucial and Samsung, but it depends on price, e.g., you'll be more likely to find good deals with Sandisk (owned by Western Digital, one of the big hard drive manufactuers) and Kingston. I've bought many of all of these and found to be reliable.
There's differences in models and age. Don't believe all the specifications you read on the pages on read speeds etc... better to read reviews.

Prices are as low as £50 for a 500GB drive, which is excellent at the moment, while around £130 for a 1TB, which is okay.
But the good deals are likely only to last as far as Monday. Keep an eye on the bargain alerts forum too over the next few days.

ED E

There are two form factors, 2.5" and M.2, you need to know which the new laptop is going to use before buying the SSD as they aren't interchangeable in laptops.

Here's a reliable retailer as an example
https://www.mymemory.co.uk/memory/data-storage/ssd-drives.html?capacity=2638

K.O.Kiki

I got an NVMe drive, and the only difference I can feel in day-to-day compared to regular SATA SSDs is that the Windows startup doesn't have time to do the circle thingy even once.
Also it was blazingly fast when copying old game installs.

Was it worth it though? Probably not.

Monotype

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I got an NVMe drive, and the only difference I can feel in day-to-day compared to regular SATA SSDs is that the Windows startup doesn't have time to do the circle thingy even once.
Also it was blazingly fast when copying old game installs.

Was it worth it though? Probably not.

Same as above. I don't really notice much improved load times, which I was kinda hoping for.