Older Dell XPS 8700: Does it make sense to upgrade the hard drive?

Question

My PC has a Seagate Barracuda Desktop Hard Drive ST2000DM001 2 TB hard drive.  Can I, should I replace it?  I really don't know what a faster hard drive feels like.  I only know that the startup time from a cold restart is about 20 minutes, and the page swap in Chrome seems sluggish.  Does this have an effect on those?

ispalten · Accepted Answer

I'd say no, but depending on what you use it for, maybe?

My 8700 had an SSD put into it (long ago) as the boot drive. Used the orig. Mechanical drive as a data drive.

Depending on the size of the SSD, you will have a cost to do that. Is the cost (and time and knowledge) to make that the boot drive worth it to you?

Consider you can't run W11, and soon, W10 will stop getting updates. At some point, other vendors will stop updating their programs, like A/V suites.

You would be basically throwing some money at an eventual swap to a newer PC.

What does it feel like, a faster boot, I recall mine was 20 or 30 seconds, but a lot goes into booting. Also the 'rest of the system'. Slow boot could also be due to minimal RAM. System swapping as you are loading on boot too many things that fill RAM and cause swapping.

System Performance is like a chain, and the weakest link is the cause for slowness. One clearly is the hard drive, but there could be others. I don't recall a 20 minute boot on any PC?

For the record, my wife's XPS8500 is over 10 years old, and with an SSD as the boot drive comes up in less that a minute. 'Feel' of the PC is the same mostly as my 8940, although my 8940 boots much faster.

So, only you can probably answer your question, is it worth spending the money to upgrade vs. putting it towards a new PC? The 8700 has a 4th Gen CPU, and you might even have an i5 in it.

Again, without the CPU model and RAM size, it is hard to tell if those are hindering the boot as well. The gain from an SSD replacement might not be as much as you expect.

Phyery · Answer

@ispalten​ That was a very thoughtful response, and I'm going to take your advice and stay with what I have.  I just upgraded the graphics card because my games suggested it was outdated.  That to me was a sign that the entire PC is on the way out.  I do drive a 34yo car, so it's hard for me to let go --- LOL

redxps630 · Answer

Try a small 120gb SATA ssd which costs $15-20. Upgrade ram to 16 GB or at least 8 GB.  DDR3 ram are also cheap now. Do a clean OS install on the ssd. Does not matter i5-4th or i7. It should still be relatively fast. If you do not open 30 or more chrome tabs at same time, 16 GB ram is good enough. It is a very small amount of $ you can invest to speed it up.

dierk · Answer

You already have a thoughtful reply (from ispalten) - with an alternative suggestion (redxps630) - but I will still toss out another point-of-view, as we own a XPS 8700. Original Specs: i7, 16GB RAM, 4GB GTX 745, and the same model HD (ST2000DM001). Post-purchase: 1) added 2nd HDD; 2) Added 500GB SSD (Samsung 850 EVO).

Considerations: You have already replaced the video card, and it sounds like you intend to keep your 8700 for as long as it remains viable.

Recommendation: Look for a decent 500 GB SSD and add that as your boot drive (C:), repurposing your existing HDD for data storage.

Reasoning (based on personal experience....): 1) It should "dramatically" improve both boot time AND user experience; 2) A 512 GB drive is large enough to be useful on subsequent systems (remove the SSD from the 8700 and install it in whatever new system you purchase), so your $$ would not be wasted. IF money is tight, a 256 GB SSD would work, although a 1TB drive would be even better if within budget.

Disclaimers: 1) The 8700 was never used as a "gaming" machine. While it did see moderate usage for photo editing, it was primarily an "office / research" system; 2) My personal desktop is currently an XPS 8950 - HOWEVER, the XPS 8700 remains in daily use in my wife's office, running the EVO SSD + 1 HDD, and continues to perform very well for her (word processing, database management, finance apps, "zoom" meetings).

FWIW, the 8950 is running: i7, 32GB RAM, GTX 1660 Super, with 2 HDD (added a 4TB HDD) + 500GB SSD. Not state-of-the-art, but still better specs for (consumer) photo editing.

Hope you are able to enjoy the 8700 at least until Windows 10 "dies!"

mrglwatson · Answer

I have a lot of Dell PCs at home, none take 20 minutes to boot and some of those PCs are about 15 years old.

Stick an SSD in there to boot and lose that hard disk, it going so slow probably means its going to fail soon.

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Older Dell XPS 8700: Does it make sense to upgrade the hard drive?

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