follow up question: is my motherboard capable of handling two hard drives? I've googled it & can't find anything confirming whether it can or not https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z270-GAMING-PRO-CARBON.html
answered I have a PC that I want to eventually get a SSD and a terabyte snaildrive with the next stimulus & wipe & reinstall the OS onto the SSD, but if I can buy a terabyte snaildrive that's straight up better than what I already have I wanna just wipe my computer now & put the OS on the new one.
someone is selling this for $5 in my area https://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_details.php?lang=en&model=WDC%20WD10EAVS. This is what I already have in my PC https://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_details.php?lang=en&model=SEAGATE%20ST3500418AS
For some reason the format for the specs on this site are completely different so my brain cant figure; is the new hard drive an upgrade from the old one (aside from just being better size)? Should I buy the cheap bigdrive and just wait to get a SSD to put the OS onto & wait to wipe or is the new drive just a straight up upgrade & I should just get it & put the OS onto that right away?
Or keep all three. Store backups of critical data/memes on your 500GB drive if you really don't need it for anything actively. Just make sure you have the right cables. You need SATA III for data (which many drives new don't come with anyways) and then power which should be off a connector from your power supply, typically a long cable with multiple power connectors.
One warning I'll mention about SSDs, although I've never had one fail personally, when they do fail they often do so catastrophically. Old spinning disks usually give warnings and indications and fail gradually and you can often recover data, with SSDs not always so. SSDs also have a maximum number of writes so if you buy one used I would be sure to check the SMART data on it as well within the return period to make sure it isn't near the end of its reliable life as far as total terabytes written.