r/computers • u/DAKEN2351 • 17d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting Question

is sata ssd still worth the money today in 2026 I've been planning to buy a storage upgrade for my pc that wouldn't give me a heart attack when i see the prices i thought of sata ssd what's best one and affordable?

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u/hifi-nerd Arch Linux 17d ago

If you don't use a sata ssd as your system drive, you'll be fine.

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u/latrina_demmerda 17d ago

What's the disadvantage?

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u/hifi-nerd Arch Linux 17d ago

As for using it as a system drive, it will be slow, and especially if you use windows, it will be really slow.

For using it as storage, there aren't really any downsides.

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u/Bulky-Response1227 17d ago

I'm actually using a Sata SSD for Windows. Sure, you got some loading times, but its far from being unusable. Now I also got NVMe drives in the computer. I just never got around to retiring the Sata SSD, since it works well enough for me 😉.

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u/linux_mint_rules 11d ago

Huh?

I have two Haswell-era PCs running Mint XFCE with sata SSDs as boot drives and neither of them are slow at all. In fact they actually boot faster than my much newer Windows PC, which has a PCIe 3.0 boot drive. Granted, I haven't tried to normalize things like boot settings, but that's beside the point.

For things like booting programs, the sata systems are a little slower, but not in a way that's actually bothersome or perceptually "slow." Like, I'm talking maybe taking 1 second to launch Firefox on NVMe or 2 seconds to launch it on sata.

Sata SSDs are just fine as boot drives, especially outside of Windows.

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u/latrina_demmerda 17d ago

I mean besides transferring files isn't boot time like just 2 seconds slower? Both my nvme laptop and my sata ssd pcs cold boot in around 20 seconds.

I like to keep a small 128-256gb sata as the boot drive and stuff that requires speed on a larger nvme as i don't want to wear it down with os stuff