How do I know what HDD and SDD I can use?

[Lulabeast]

I have a Toshiba Qosmio X875-Q7380. I know the hard drives it came with are causing it to be slow. I want to replace them, but I haven't got a clue where to look or what sizes I need to use. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: Meant SSD in the title.

 

[USAFRet]

Any SATA III SSD will work.
Samsung 850 EVO, Crucial MX300, for example.

Size? This depends on your use and budget.
250GB starts at around $100USD.

So how much space do you need, and how much do you wish to spend on this?

 

[Lulabeast]

Any SATA III SSD will work.
Samsung 850 EVO, Crucial MX300, for example.

Size? This depends on your use and budget.
250GB starts at around $100USD.

So how much space do you need, and how much do you wish to spend on this?

Thanks! What about HDD? I was hoping to replace both drives. It came with 2 500GB hard drives. My plan was to remove the spare HDD and transfer the OS to the SSD then remove the other HDD and install the new one. For both drives, I was planning on spending about $200.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Does the lappie support (2) 2.5" drives ? This is 2.25 TB of total storage ... 250 GB SSD + 2 TB Hybrid SSD / HD

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($104.88 @ OutletPC)
Does the lappie support (2) 2.5" drives ? This is 2.25 TB of total storage

Storage: Seagate - FireCuda 2TB 2.5" 5400RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $194.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-07-20 18:16 EDT-0400

 

[USAFRet]

Any SATA III SSD will work.
Samsung 850 EVO, Crucial MX300, for example.

Size? This depends on your use and budget.
250GB starts at around $100USD.

So how much space do you need, and how much do you wish to spend on this?

Thanks! What about HDD? I was hoping to replace both drives. It came with 2 500GB hard drives. My plan was to remove the spare HDD and transfer the OS to the SSD then remove the other HDD and install the new one. For both drives, I was planning on spending about $200.

It has 2 drives in it now?
OK....
250GB SSD for the OS and applications.
Samsung 850 EVO - $105
https/www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E250B-AM/dp/B00OAJ412U

Crucial MX300 - $100
https/www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX300-275GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B01IAGSD5O

Secondary HDD - 1 or 2TB something
WD Black 1TB - $67
https/www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Mobile-Hard-Drive/dp/B01DOL05OC

Seagate 2TB - $110
https/www.amazon.com/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM003/dp/B00I8O6OQ4

WD Blue 1TB - $54
https/www.amazon.com/Blue-Mobile-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00C9TEBJQ

 

[The Paladin]

the default HDD you have in that laptop is a 1TB drive (there was no morel indicated) so hard to know if 5400 or 7200rpm, would need to run SPECCy on it, the program may be able to identify the exact model of HDD, swapping it for another depends really hat you have for example with assuming your laptop has a 5400rpm HDD would it be faster to upgrade to 7200 rpm, yes, but value wise it would not be an UPGRADE compared to an SSD. but price comes into play as a 1TB SDD is quite expensive (3-500$) compared to a 1TB 7200 that can be had for 54$ at frys.com

500GB (usually listed as 480GB SSD can be had on a sale for 150-175$

 

[Lulabeast]

Thanks everyone! The laptop came with two 500GB HDDs, and I will be replacing both. One with an SSD and the other with a larger HDD. I greatly appreciate the advice from everyone.

 

[mjslakeridge]

Are you sure the current HDDs are being defragmented on a regular basis? Are they getting too full? Either a fragmented drive or one that is near capacity will slow down the computer.

And if you have a regular deframenting schedule set up, make sure you turn off defragmenting for the SSD if you get one, as SSDs should not be defragmented.

 

[Lulabeast]

It is done! I order the 250GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD and installed them into the laptop with relative ease thanks to Youtube. The data transfer went smoothly and the laptop runs beautifully.

The only bump I ran into during the ~45 minute process was finding which drive had the OS on it. Since they were matching drives, I had to guess which one I needed to remove first. I guessed wrong on my first try, but swapping the drives out once the bottom is all open is simple and quick.

A want to express another giant "THANK YOU" to everyone that helped me and gave me advice, especially USAFRet!