Just recently I bought a Samsung 850 SSD, along with an HDD bay to replace my CD drive.
I switched the SSD to be my boot drive, and the HDD is all my old data.
My computer now boots in 4 seconds. (Not counting time to unlock the disk encryption, about 2 seconds, plus typing in my long passwords…)
My old drive has been getting old, I was struggling to pull 5 MB/s from it when I needed, and I knew it wasn’t gonna hold up for much.
Choosing an SSD to replace it was the best upgrade to my computer since I bought it.
No more I/O blocking, no more long waits on package installations, and games appear to load many times faster.
Although I still have most of my games on my HDD, having the OS on an SSD frees up I/O on the disk so I can start pulling 80 MB/s from it when needed.
Of the many things I noticed after switching drives, is that just by booting from a different drive, my HDD appears to have gained performance. I’m not sure why, possibly the deadline scheduler didn’t handle under pressure so well.
Although of course, that’s nothing compared to the just as promised 520 MB/s from the 850 SSD. If you’re buying a hard drive and don’t mind paying some 20% more for it, the performance is absolutely worth it.
TLDR; Bought an SSD, reduced time to start things by 90% and increased performance dramatically.