Worth upgrading Samsung 840 EVO SATA SSD (2013 model) to something more modern?

[King Mustard]

Here are the general laptop specifications:

• 14" 1920×1080 IPS display
• MSI MS-1492 motherboard
• Intel Core i7-4712MQ (4C 8T, 37W) (2014 model)
• 8 GB Kingston DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M (2 GB VRAM, 40W) (2014 model)
• Samsung 840 EVO SSD (120 GB, SATA III, 2.5") (2013 model)
• Western Digital Black HDD (750 GB, SATA III, 7,200 RPM, WD7500BPKX)
• Killer E2200 Gigabit Ethernet (2013 model)
• Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260HMW (802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.0) (2013 model)
• Realtek ALC269 audio (2009 model)

Do you think I'll gain much faster speeds if I upgraded to something like a 512 GB Samsung 870 EVO SATA SSD (2021 model)?

[Kumagoro]

For everyday use like web browsing and office work in my opinion you wouldn't notice.

The obvious thing I can think of is stuff not on the SSD now that you would put on there with more space. I assume games are not on the SSD now so it would make a difference there.

[amjad175]

Everyday use is not going to show much difference. If the capacity is sufficient then I would just carry on with the current setup. How much data is written to the drive will affect longevity until flash memory is worn out, make sure you have good backups.

[kalniel]

How much data is written to the drive will affect longevity until flash memory is worn out, make sure you have good backups.

When flash memory wears out you *should* be able to still read just fine, so you shouldn't lose data. In practise, making sure you have backups is useful for a variety of other reasons, so definitely good advice.

[DanceswithUnix]

When flash memory wears out you *should* be able to still read just fine, so you shouldn't lose data. In practise, making sure you have backups is useful for a variety of other reasons, so definitely good advice.

There are all too many stories of failed flash drives giving you one shot at reading when they fail, and after power cycling won't even return a drive ID let alone data.

Their mode of failure is pretty unfriendly, but thankfully they are so much more reliable than spinning rust they still seem a better bet.

[ik9000]

nope. There are marginal changes in bench tests, no discernible difference for typical real-world use. Certainly not enough to justify spending money, unless you're worried about longevity as you know you've been hammering it with read-write cycles etc. Both max out a SATAIII connection, that is the limiting factor more than the drives themselves. There may be a difference in buffer (IDK) but that would only affect batch transfers. Unless you're copying large files regularly (e.g. dumps of high-res photos in batches) chances are you might not notice that anyway.

[DanceswithUnix]

A cheap modern 1TB SSD could mean you could ditch the HDD and still have more overall storage by putting it all on one device which might help quality of life, but not really performance all that much. That 128GB SSD is pretty small.

Upgrading RAM to 16GB might be a better idea.

Or just put the money towards a new laptop if you are seeing performance issues.