This week, Avram Piltch discusses one of the biggest changes in the tech space for 2019: the price of solid-state memory. Both NAND flash and standard SSD drives have come down significantly in price, making them a great option for upgrading an existing computer. Many of us have an older laptop that is simply too slow for everyday use, but removing a traditional spinning hard drive or a hybrid drive and replacing it with a solid-state drive can completely change the experience.

Avram recently did this for a colleague from a sister publication. They had a laptop for their son, who wanted to use it for gaming purposes. The problem was that launching apps and games took way too long. So, Avram swapped out the drive, using one purchased at retail. The price for a 1TB solid-state drive was just over $100, making the price per gig around 12 cents. This represents a major shift downward in pricing. Scott also has a recent example of this upgrade. His business partner at Sumo Software has an older laptop with a hybrid drive, which was so slow that the laptop was retired. However, after ordering an SSD from Amazon, the laptop acts like an almost brand new machine.

When making this switch, there is an important part of the process that is required: cloning the old drive to the new one. Doing that will be far easier than trying to start from scratch, having to install Windows, reinstall all of your apps, etc. Instead, you can use a tool to take the original drive and duplicate it exactly to the new drive. Then, simply pull the old drive out of the computer, replace it with the new drive, and you are off and running. It's a small amount of work that can make a big impact.