The selection of a primary storage drive in important because it is where your operating system and applications will be housed - so you need to make sure there is enough space for what you need now as well as room to grow for the future. How quickly your operating system and programs load is also largely affected by the speed of this drive, so if you demand fast overall performance from your computer you don't want to skimp here.

Traditional hard drives operate by storing data on a spinning metal disk, called a platter. The more platters there are in a drive, and the more data that can be crammed onto each platter, is what determines the overall storage capacity of a given hard drive. Having more platters also tends to mean louder drives, though rotational speed affects that as well. Rotational speed also impacts the drive's performance: if it spins faster it can read or write more information per second.

Another storage option is solid-state drives, which don't have any moving parts. Instead they store data in a flash-like memory - similarly to how memory cards for cameras and other devices operate. This makes them completely silent, but they tend to cost a lot more for the same amount of storage when compared to normal hard drives. They can also perform faster or slower than hard drives, depending on the way they are manufactured; here at Puget Systems we've chosen to carry only the highest quality solid-state drives, so if you choose to invest in one you will get excellent performance.

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Samsung's 860 EVO line of mainstream solid-state drives are affordable but high-quality SSDs designed to cover the needs of most computer users. They use a SATA III 6Gbps data connection, and are available in multiple capacities and form factors. This 250GB model has sequential read speeds of up to 550MB/s with write speeds up to 520MB/s, right in line with the maximum theoretical speeds for SATA III, and a traditional 2.5" drive form factor.

WD Gold drives are oriented toward data center use - and so feature high speeds paired with increased reliability features. For performance they use the SATA 6Gbps interconnect, spin at 7200rpm, and have 128 MB cache. Reliability is ensured with dual actuator head positioning, RAFF for vibration protection, and TLER to help avoid drives dropping out of arrays (RAID). Even though they are aimed at data centers and other enterprise applications, the features these drives have make them excellent options for users who need high capacity, reliability, and performance.

Western Digital's Red line of hard drives are a combination of the lower power and low noise features of the Green series along with the 24/7 operation and longevity of the RE series. They are not the fastest drives, but are built for use in storage servers and other always-on systems that need large drive capacity - making them a perfect choice for NAS units, home servers, and RAID configurations.

We have an article where you can read about the differences between the Red and Green series in more depth here.

Puget Professional Advice:

Jeff Stubbers (Technology Consultant) Says: This is an excellent drive if you are looking for a cool and quiet operating drive along with higher capacity. This drive does run around 5400 RPM, where traditional drives run around 7200 RPM, so there will be a certain performance hit when accessing data on these drives. It's worth mentioning that these drives use 4KB sectors instead of 512B sectors, so if you intend to install Windows XP on your own with these drives, make sure to run the WD Align utility to allow you to properly install on this drive.

Ruben Romero (Senior Production Technician) Says: I like the Red series drives from Western Digital. I use two of these 2TB drives in a RAID1 at home with a simple NAS box that sits on top of my desk and another in my day to day system for storage. The Red series drives are quieter under use since they only spin at 5400RPM and have respectable performance as well. I would recommend Red drives for someone who just needs large amounts of space to store their media or projects.

Samsung's 970 EVO line of solid-state drives is part of their third generation of retail M.2 form factor SSDs. These drives run at a full PCI-Express 3.0 x4 speed, which provides lots bandwidth and results in performance that is several times what a SATA III based SSD can provide. This 250GB model has sequential read speeds of up to 3.4GB/s with write speeds up to 1.5GB/s.

The limitation of these EVO series drives, however, is that not all of the memory on the drive is capable of those speeds. A portion is, and therefore is used as a cache, but the rest of the drive has slower write speeds. That can show up in situations where a lot of data is being written at once: after a time, as the faster part of the drive is used up, the write speeds will drop substantially. This situation is not likely to arise in typical desktop usage, but can show up in some workstation loads.

Please note that some M.2 slots, especially on older motherboards, may not run at the full PCIe x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot.

 Most Popular Part!

Samsung's line of solid-state drives are among the fastest SSDs on the market. The 860 Pro series improves upon the well respected 850 Pro with slightly higher speeds and an increased write endurance rating. It uses the industry standard SATA III 6Gbps interface and 2.5" drive form factor. This specific 256GB capacity model reaches up to 560MB per second for reads and 530MB per second for writes, and in excess of 90k IOPS.

WD Gold drives are oriented toward data center use - and so feature high speeds paired with increased reliability features. For performance they use the SATA 6Gbps interconnect, spin at 7200rpm, and have 128 MB cache. Reliability is ensured with dual actuator head positioning, RAFF for vibration protection, and TLER to help avoid drives dropping out of arrays (RAID). Even though they are aimed at data centers and other enterprise applications, the features these drives have make them excellent options for users who need high capacity, reliability, and performance.

 Most Popular Part!

Samsung's 860 EVO line of mainstream solid-state drives are affordable but high-quality SSDs designed to cover the needs of most computer users. They use a SATA III 6Gbps data connection, and are available in multiple capacities and form factors. This 500GB model has sequential read speeds of up to 550MB/s with write speeds up to 520MB/s, right in line with the maximum theoretical speeds for SATA III, and a traditional 2.5" drive form factor.

Puget Professional Advice:

Gene Han (Production Technician) Says: This SSD has great read/write speeds without sacrificing any stability. I use this to for my operating system and my boot times are extremely fast. Visually identical to the 850 series. Quick, Quiet, Affordable, and Reliable.

Samsung's 970 EVO line of solid-state drives is part of their third generation of retail M.2 form factor SSDs. These drives run at a full PCI-Express 3.0 x4 speed, which provides lots bandwidth and results in performance that is several times what a SATA III based SSD can provide. This 500GB model has sequential read speeds of up to 3.4GB/s with write speeds up to 2.3GB/s.

The limitation of these EVO series drives, however, is that not all of the memory on the drive is capable of those speeds. A portion is, and therefore is used as a cache, but the rest of the drive has slower write speeds. That can show up in situations where a lot of data is being written at once: after a time, as the faster part of the drive is used up, the write speeds will drop substantially. This situation is not likely to arise in typical desktop usage, but can show up in some workstation loads.

Please note that some M.2 slots, especially on older motherboards, may not run at the full PCIe x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot.

 Most Popular Part!

Samsung's line of solid-state drives are among the fastest SSDs on the market. The 860 Pro series improves upon the well respected 850 Pro with slightly higher speeds and an increased write endurance rating. It uses the industry standard SATA III 6Gbps interface and 2.5" drive form factor. This specific 512GB capacity model reaches up to 560MB per second for reads and 530MB per second for writes, and in excess of 90k IOPS.

Samsung's 860 EVO line of mainstream solid-state drives are affordable but high-quality SSDs designed to cover the needs of most computer users. They use a SATA III 6Gbps data connection, and are available in multiple capacities and form factors. This 1TB model has sequential read speeds of up to 550MB/s with write speeds up to 520MB/s, right in line with the maximum theoretical speeds for SATA III, and a traditional 2.5" drive form factor.

Samsung's 970 Pro line of solid-state drives is their third generation of retail M.2 form factor SSDs. These drives run at a full PCI-Express 3.0 x4 speed, which provides lots bandwidth and results in performance that is several times what a SATA III based SSD can provide. This 512GB model has sequential read speeds of up to 3.5GB/s with write speeds up to 2.3GB/s.

Please note that some M.2 slots, especially on older motherboards, may not run at the full PCIe x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot. These drives can also get hot during extended read / write operations - moving data in the hundreds of gigabytes range. That is an extreme scenario, and most users will never run into it, but if the drive does get too hot it will throttle down to prevent overheating. That will reduce drive speeds until it cools off, but even in that situation performance is still well above what SATA-based SSDs offer.

 Most Popular Part!

Intel's latest SSD technology is branded Optane, and uses a new type of nonvolatile storage called 3D XPoint memory (pronounced "cross point"). This memory is offered in both small SSDs, intended for hard drive caching, as well as in mid-capacity drives. The Intel 900P series is an example of the latter, using PCI-Express 3.0 x4 to deliver very high performance in reads, writes, and IOPS.

This particular model has a capacity of 280GB, with read speeds of up to 2500MB/s and write speeds up to 2000MB/s. Input/output operations per second are incredibly high as well, with up to 550,000 IOPS for reads and 500,000 IOPS for writes.

Please note that these drives require a PCI-E 3.0 slot of x4 size or larger to operate at full speed.

Samsung's 970 EVO line of solid-state drives is part of their third generation of retail M.2 form factor SSDs. These drives run at a full PCI-Express 3.0 x4 speed, which provides lots bandwidth and results in performance that is several times what a SATA III based SSD can provide. This 1TB model has sequential read speeds of up to 3.4GB/s with write speeds up to 2.5GB/s.

The limitation of these EVO series drives, however, is that not all of the memory on the drive is capable of those speeds. A portion is, and therefore is used as a cache, but the rest of the drive has slower write speeds. That can show up in situations where a lot of data is being written at once: after a time, as the faster part of the drive is used up, the write speeds will drop substantially. This situation is not likely to arise in typical desktop usage, but can show up in some workstation loads.

Please note that some M.2 slots, especially on older motherboards, may not run at the full PCIe x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot.

 Most Popular Part!

Samsung's line of solid-state drives are among the fastest SSDs on the market. The 860 Pro series improves upon the well respected 850 Pro with slightly higher speeds and an increased write endurance rating. It uses the industry standard SATA III 6Gbps interface and 2.5" drive form factor. This specific 1TB capacity model reaches up to 560MB per second for reads and 530MB per second for writes, and in excess of 90k IOPS.

 Most Popular Part!

Intel's latest SSD technology is branded Optane, and uses a new type of nonvolatile storage called 3D XPoint memory (pronounced "cross point"). This memory is offered in both small SSDs, intended for hard drive caching, as well as in mid-capacity drives. The Intel 900P series is an example of the latter, using PCI-Express 3.0 x4 to deliver very high performance in reads, writes, and IOPS.

This particular model has a capacity of 480GB, with read speeds of up to 2500MB/s and write speeds up to 2000MB/s. Input/output operations per second are incredibly high as well, with up to 550,000 IOPS for reads and 500,000 IOPS for writes.

Please note that these drives require a PCI-E 3.0 slot of x4 size or larger to operate at full speed.

Samsung's 860 EVO line of mainstream solid-state drives are affordable but high-quality SSDs designed to cover the needs of most computer users. They use a SATA III 6Gbps data connection, and are available in multiple capacities and form factors. This 2TB model has sequential read speeds of up to 550MB/s with write speeds up to 520MB/s, right in line with the maximum theoretical speeds for SATA III, and a traditional 2.5" drive form factor.

Samsung's 970 Pro line of solid-state drives is their third generation of retail M.2 form factor SSDs. These drives run at a full PCI-Express 3.0 x4 speed, which provides lots bandwidth and results in performance that is several times what a SATA III based SSD can provide. This 1TB model has sequential read speeds of up to 3.5GB/s with write speeds up to 2.7GB/s.

Please note that some M.2 slots, especially on older motherboards, may not run at the full PCIe x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot. These drives can also get hot during extended read / write operations - moving data in the hundreds of gigabytes range. That is an extreme scenario, and most users will never run into it, but if the drive does get too hot it will throttle down to prevent overheating. That will reduce drive speeds until it cools off, but even in that situation performance is still well above what SATA-based SSDs offer.

Samsung's 970 EVO line of solid-state drives is part of their third generation of retail M.2 form factor SSDs. These drives run at a full PCI-Express 3.0 x4 speed, which provides lots bandwidth and results in performance that is several times what a SATA III based SSD can provide. This 2TB model has sequential read speeds of up to 3.4GB/s with write speeds up to 2.5GB/s.

The limitation of these EVO series drives, however, is that not all of the memory on the drive is capable of those speeds. A portion is, and therefore is used as a cache, but the rest of the drive has slower write speeds. That can show up in situations where a lot of data is being written at once: after a time, as the faster part of the drive is used up, the write speeds will drop substantially. This situation is not likely to arise in typical desktop usage, but can show up in some workstation loads.

Please note that some M.2 slots, especially on older motherboards, may not run at the full PCIe x4 this SSD is capable of. In such cases, performance will be limited by the speed of the slot.

 Most Popular Part!

Samsung's line of solid-state drives are among the fastest SSDs on the market. The 860 Pro series improves upon the well respected 850 Pro with slightly higher speeds and an increased write endurance rating. It uses the industry standard SATA III 6Gbps interface and 2.5" drive form factor. This specific 2TB capacity model reaches up to 560MB per second for reads and 530MB per second for writes, and in excess of 90k IOPS.

 Most Popular Part!

Intel's latest SSD technology is branded Optane, and uses a new type of nonvolatile storage called 3D XPoint memory (pronounced "cross point"). This memory is offered in both small SSDs, intended for hard drive caching, as well as in higher-capacity drives. The Intel 905P series is an example of the latter, using PCI-Express 3.0 x4 to deliver very high performance in reads, writes, and IOPS.

This particular model has a capacity of 960GB, with read speeds of up to 2600MB/s and write speeds up to 2200MB/s. Input/output operations per second are incredibly high as well, with up to 575,000 IOPS for reads and 550,000 IOPS for writes.

Please note that these drives require a PCI-E 3.0 slot of x4 size or larger to operate at full speed.