SOLID-STATE DRIVES
Once you’ve used an M.2, you can’t go
back. To be fair, that’s not strictly true,
but it’s a good sound bite, and there are
some transfers where you can notice the
difference. Not every system has access
to M.2, though, and even those that do
tend to be limited to one or maybe two
slots. M.2 drives also demand a slight
premium over 2.5-inch SSDs. That
means there is still a market for the
more traditional SSD, and such drives
are still the go-to upgrade for anyoneCRUCIAL BX300 480GB
http://www.crucial.comTOTAL
£260–£1,020ADVANCED
HGST HE10
How much storage do you really need?
We’re assuming you have some form of
network attached storage, a good sized
SSD, plenty of backup options, and a
healthy chunk of online storage, like any
good setup. So what’s left? Some extra
space is nice, sure, but unless you have
specific requirements, a 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB
hard drive is probably all you need, and will
set you back £40–£145. You can now pick
up hard drives up to 12TB, although they
cost over £560. This 10TB model is a little
more reasonable.HARD DRIVES
http://www.hgst.com £340who is still running an old-fashioned
spinning hard drive.
The Crucial BX300 is our new
favorite budget SSD, packing half a
terabyte for a wallet-friendly £125. As
with any modern SSD, performance is
decent enough, although you’ll find that
the straight throughput of any SSD that
uses SATA is ultimately limited by the
interface. Still, it is significantly faster
and will be longer lived than the
spinning platters of yore.TOTAL
£125
BUDGET
FEATURE
Today’s best upgrades
SAMSUNG 960 PRO
http://www.samsung.comNo-brainer time: If you want the fastest
storage around, you’ll want an SSD. Not
just any SSD either—you’ll want a PCIe
M.2 drive that is capable of producing
the kind of transfer rates that make
grown system admins weep. And at the
top of that pile of drives at the moment
is Samsung, with its 960 Pro range of
M.2 drives, where you’ll see sustained
transfer reads and writes of 3,400MB/s
and 2,100MB/s respectively. The
random 4K performance is no slouch
either, hitting 57MB/s and 194MB/swhen throwing around smaller files.
You’ll notice that we haven’t specified a
capacity with our recommendation, and
that’s because we suggest getting the
biggest drive you can afford, without
getting silly; £260 will net you a fairly
sizeable 512GB model, which is more
than enough for your OS and your main
applications. Jumping up to a 1TB drive
means you can hold a good chunk of
your data on the drive as well, with the
pricey 2TB model allowing for serious
data usage.SAMSUNG
960 EVO
http://www.samsung.comThe 960 Evo mixes a lot of the same
magic as the 960 Pro, but at a lower
price. The big difference is the type of
NAND used: The 960 Pro uses MLC
(Multi-Level Cell) flash, while the Evo
uses TLC (Triple-Level Cell). They’re
both 3D NAND architectures, but the
Pro manages to squeeze more into the
same space, which is why it’s available
in larger capacities—512GB–2TB, while
the Evo ships at 250GB–1TB.
Performance-wise, there is a
difference between the Pro and Evo,
but it isn’t huge – sustained reads and
writes of 3,200MB/s and 1,800MB/s
aren’t too far off the Pro. It’s worth
noting that the 960 Pro does have a
five-year warranty (or 800TB
written), while the 960 Evo
only has three years.TOTAL
£110-£432
MID_RANGE