Does a Large Capacity Hard Drive Make a Computer Run Slower

everything else being equal, no, at least not in any noticeable, meaningful way.

The SSD will boot up in less than 20 seconds. It is faster overall than the HDD. Size does make a difference especially when you get some data on them but the difference is not linear. In other words a 500 GB is not twice as fast as a 1 TB.

The thing that makes hard drives slower is fragmentation. Regular disk defragmentation can significantly improve your computer's speed, especially when launching programs and working with larger files. It occurs when the file system cannot or will not allocate enough contiguous space to store a complete file as a unit, but instead puts parts of it in gaps between existing files - usually those gaps exist because they formerly held a file that the file system has subsequently deleted.

You can schedule regular disk defrag during downtime.

Heisenberg wrote:
The SSD will boot up in less than 20 seconds. It is faster overall than the HDD. Size does make a difference especially when you get some data on them but the difference is not linear. In other words a 500 GB is not twice as fast as a 1 TB.

The SSD drives are amazing - boot up is much, much quicker.

I upgraded my 2103 Acer NE-522 from 4 gb Ram and 500 GB to 8 gb Ram and 1 TB, it boots faster and is much quicker loading programs! Just don't ask for specifics! LOL!

SSD drives can lose some of it data over time. So backup often.

SSD drives are solid state and don't have to spin like a regular hard drive. They are blazing fast, and often are used to hold the operating system of a PC, so the boot up is fast.

HDD drives come in different speeds. It's quite likely a new PC will have a higher speed hard drive than an older one. So a new larger drive might actually run faster than an older smaller one.

Any HDD will run more slowly if the disk is fragmented. That used to be something you had to do manually. Windows 10 calls it "disk optimizer" and by default it runs weekly, which should be more than adequate. But you can also run it manually if you want to.

Thanks for tne information, friends.

Heisenberg wrote:
The SSD will boot up in less than 20 seconds. It is faster overall than the HDD. Size does make a difference especially when you get some data on them but the difference is not linear. In other words a 500 GB is not twice as fast as a 1 TB.

That's interesting. My Toshiba Laptop with mechanical hard drive boots up in about the same time as your SSD., Although I'm sure SSD's provide other benefits, such as no moving parts to break or wear out.

Irover wrote:
I upgraded my 2103 Acer NE-522 from 4 gb Ram and 500 GB to 8 gb Ram and 1 TB, it boots faster and is much quicker loading programs! Just don't ask for specifics! LOL!

I'm having that same experience on a MacBook Pro. The main culprit for me right now is the Ram-today's computer programs require at least twice the memory of those 5-7 years ago. I have 7 TB on 3 USB drives and they have little impact on speed unless they are actually working with lots of data.