Should I Upgrade my HDD?

[RedRibbon]

I recently upgraded almost all the parts of my PC. New mobo, new OS, new RAM, new CPU, new video card. I didn't upgrade my HDD because I couldn't really afford to at the time and it still runs just fine after about 5 years (it's an old Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB). My new mobo (gigabyte Z77X-UD5H) is SATA 3 capable while my old HDD is only SATA. Is it worth upgrading the HDD now? Will it make any difference when gaming? If so, what reasonably priced HDDs would you recommend? I know I'll have to clone the drive, which I've done before (it was a pain, one of the reasons I've put it off), but don't want to go through the time and expense if it's not worth it, or I don't need it. Thanks in advance for any advice! Cheers!

Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H
Corsair 8gb Vengeance RAM
Windows 8
Kingwin 550w Platinum
Intel i5 3570k CPU

 

[USAFRet]

Consider an SSD for your primary drive.

And whichever way you go, I'd suggest a reinstall rather than clone. Especially if you go with the SSD. Do you really want to drag along 5 years worth of cruft on to a brand new drive?

 

[Fouchey]

SSDs are cheap now. You can get one that would run 10x faster than your HDD right now for under $150.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147192

Also they are selling just the samsung 840 for $89.99 right now. Use your old HDD for a backup and extra storage.

Edit: Did not see asked about gaming. No they don't affect gaming enough for me to recommend buying one JUST for gaming. Overall performance though is completely worth it.

 

[Kingbob]

You wont notice any difference when gaming (if you get an SSD) except for load times and open world rendering (which usually isnt a problem since the developers make the game for 7200 HDD's usually).

Id either get this 3TB Beast (I just bought one today!):
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY/ref=sr_1_1_ha?ie=UTF8&qid=1374029589&sr=8-1&keywords=3tb+internal+hard+drive

Or if you want to spend a bit less, try this 1TB drive:
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY/ref=sr_1_1_ha?ie=UTF8&qid=1374029589&sr=8-1&keywords=3tb+internal+hard+drive

 

[RedRibbon]

Consider an SSD for your primary drive.

And whichever way you go, I'd suggest a reinstall rather than clone. Especially if you go with the SSD. Do you really want to drag along 5 years worth of cruft on to a brand new drive?

The reason that I was thinking I would clone my drive rather than do the fresh reinstall of all my files was that I just upgraded my OS. I went from Windows XP to Windows 8 and when I did that, it pretty much cleaned everything out. Though it was an upgrade, would there still be the clutter? Some of my old files were saved in the windows.old folder.

 

[Kingbob]

Consider an SSD for your primary drive.

And whichever way you go, I'd suggest a reinstall rather than clone. Especially if you go with the SSD. Do you really want to drag along 5 years worth of cruft on to a brand new drive?

The reason that I was thinking I would clone my drive rather than do the fresh reinstall of all my files was that I just upgraded my OS. I went from Windows XP to Windows 8 and when I did that, it pretty much cleaned everything out. Though it was an upgrade, would there still be the clutter? Some of my old files were saved in the windows.old folder.

Since you just upgraded you'd be OK if you just cloned it.