The bottom has fallen out of SSD prices. 18 or so months ago, a 2 tb SSD failed. Adata sent me a new one (they called it refurb) Have had it for sale in various places. (orig cost ~$225 maybe 3 years ago) Turned down an ebay offer of about $185, (before the 13-14% ebay fees) Don't recall any other offers. New, the price is now down to maybe $100!! Broke it open a month ago and used it as the boot drive for a new to me X58 motherboard which I put in an old full tower case and added existing parts. (2010 vintage--- triple channel memory and they overclock very well)... My first X58 build was 2010. First gen Intel Core i7 Back then, I didn't know it, but I bent some cpu socket pins, PC always worked but with only 4 of the 6 ram sticks functional. Technically the ram is double channel now. It always worked, though, then I added a 6 core Xeon cpu (~$1400 new, 20-35 on ebay ) about 2017 and then overclocked it from 2.8 to 4.0 Ghz. Gurus get 4.6 out of the system!
Upgraded the old X58 build to an SSD long ago, but that one is Sata 2, so max speeds are 300 mbps. The 2nd old mb has two Sata 3 ports and USB 3. I even got two HDD'S working in raid, which doubled their speed to about 300.. not bad. That's faster than the SSD boot drive as it is in a Sata 2 port. That generation was the first SATA 3. No way to get the connected drives to be the boot drive --and the Marvel controller is wonky.
It's easy to clone HDD to SSD.. Lots of programs. hard to find one that's free and fully feaured, though GPT seems the way to go....
I also duplicate my files rather than backing them up, so each copy's files can be easily viewed and altered . I have many 10-16 tb HDD's now, so am set for quite some time as my photo/video library grows. You should have two copies of all important data..that's three total..
One thing that would really speed up your file access is to install a PCI-e to NVMe adaptor in an available slot closest to the cpu. If your mb is PCI Gen 2, that NVMe drive will deliver over 3x the speeds of any 2.5" SSD. Inm my two Gen 4 systems, my best drives top out at 7400 mbps... that's~14 times faster than a 2.5" SSD!! Gen 5 doubles that to 15000!!!
Depending on your mb vintage, you might even be able to find a modded bios that could make said NVMe SSD bootable. I've read that it is possible on my X58 system (2009-2011 vinatge)
By the way, I got the first NVMe drive back in early 2017,iirc. 500 gb Samsung 950 Pro--cost--over $300 .Well, I upgraded two 970 Evo + from 500 to 1 tb a month ago. Got them for $55 each!! Told ya SSD prices have crashed even the newish NVMe! ~18 mo ago, I bought two 2 tb Samsung 980 Pro drives for $500 Sold one on FB mkt place for $300 the next day. @ weeks ago, I bought a 2 tb WD SN850X For $135!! Even faster than the 980 Pro. I have two each in my best two PC's, one of the four is 1 tb. Boot times are a few seconds, and editing images/videos is smooth and fast. I download new images to the 2nd of those fast drives and do my editing there... Back them up when I'm mostly done to a couple HDD's. I should make two copies right off the bat when taking them off the memory card.... and then erase the copy later, that hasn't been edited. (Mental note... do that, rb!!)
I have Windows 11 on 2 laptops, but prefer W 10....Was surprised to hear rumors of W 12 being in the works...
