I have been planning on completely wiping my pc and getting an SSD and reinstalling windows onto that. Here is the ssd I have in mind:
I wanted to know, first of all; how much faster that would be then having windows on a normal harddrive? Like how big of a speed boost would it be. Secondly I would like to know alternatives to that SSD. I would be willing to pay a bit more if there is a different SSD I should get that would be faster. Last thing, once I install windows onto the SSD is there a way to kind of lock the ssd so I can't install other shit onto it? I basically want windows, and windows only on the SSD.
i dont know exact numbers other than my boot times but with a 7200rpm drive my windows 7 boots in 67 seconds and with a SSD my boot time is 8 seconds flat (times include being able to type hello into google and get search results )
You should read SSD reviews. However, don't you think that 120GB is a bit small? You can easily grab larger SSD on Amazon when they are discounted, if you don't mind using another brand. Crucial and Transcend are often discounted. Keep in mind though, that for some reason Transcend SSDs have a lesser write speed, the smaller they are. I picked up this SSD for about 100$. That being said 100$ is significantly more than 40$.
You are going to notice the difference, thats for sure. You are even able to game and copy files from and to your SSD. As an alternative, there exist these hybrid HDDs, but I don't know how good they actually are - again I refer to reviews. To your final question: You would not want to do that. Why? Because you certainly want caching to happen on your SSD. If you still want to set your dive to read only, you could do that like this: (Keep in mind though, that I do NOT know if Windows is able to work, when the primary drive is set to read only. Furthermore, you propably need to link your AppData folder and the folder Windows downloads updates to):
Open CMD or PowerShell (as admin) and type diskpart, then type list disk, select your disk with select disk <NUMBER> and finally type attributes disk set readonly. Exit diskpart with exit.
Again, I do not know if Windows is supposed to work this way.
Let me know if you tried it and whether or not it worked ;-)
SSDs are usually 4 to 5 time faster than 7200rpm HDDs, depending on the SSD you get and talking about strictly about read speed (write speeds fluctuate a lot more).
I don't know about locking it. Most programs ask you where you want to install them though, so you could just set it to install to your second hdd. For things like Steam, there is an option to set your default install filepath to wherever you want. I just put mine in a "Games" folder on my second hdd, same with Battle.net.
Also, you can change the filepath for your "Documents", "Downloads", "Pictures", etc by going into File Explorer, right click on the folder, click properties, and then under the location tab change the filepath. It will ask you if you want to move everything that's already in that folder with it, I click yes.
The SSD you linked is a bad unit. It is cheap and using a type of flash that is not reliable and not known to last for more than a couple of years. It is TLC Nand flash, and TLC is not reliable. Look for MLC, or the one expection to good TLC which is samsung's EVO drives, and only that exception.
I would recommend rather something like this from a more reputable SSD manufacturer. It features MLC rather than TLC which is more reliable in the long run and plenty read performance. The real speed boost you'd feel by switching to an SSD is the IOPS boost, which means that access times go down and therefore programs start faster, OS boots faster explorer loads thumbnails faster, etc. I would still install most programs on that SSD too, 120GB should still be enough for Windows + Programs, only larger Programs or Games should then be moved to another location like your HDD. You don't need to lock your SSD for that, in fact Windows wouldn't like it if you put your SSD in read-only mode, just use your HDD as your main storage, install Programs in a folder there and put something like your Steam library also on your HDD.
My SSD is cheaper and smaller... 11s from cold dead to responsive desktop screen. You know how long your current HDD is taking to load windows and drivers and other software... 11seconds from cold dead state to fully functional desktop.