Solid State drives

I've been thinking of getting an SSD, or maybe even getting a whole new computer with an SSD, after hearing many good things about them. The computer I have now was built by my nephew about 7 or 8 years ago, and while it gets the job done, there are times where I've wished I'd had something a little better, but just never made the jump to a SSD.

I replaced my hard drive in my Laptop a year ago with a SSD. The SSD came with a download link for acronis and I bought a connector wire for my SSD to USB (I think it was a sata). I put a complete image of my hard drive onto the new SSD. After swapping the drives, my laptop fired up instantly with the SSD in it. Because it was an image, it just carried on like nothing had changed. Only it was so much faster.

I totally agree that it's a great way to speed up a computer and they totally replace the hard drive in a laptop.

How far backward compatible are SSD drives? I have a Dell desktop that's about 10 years old. An SSD would really speed it up. But would an internal SSD be plug'n'play?

First off, does your motherboard have SATA 3 Gbit/s or SATA 6 Gbit/s connectors? SATA 3 Gbit/s was released in 2004 and SATA 6 Gbit/s was released in 2009, so they may be there. Also, there are reasonably priced SATA adaptors that plug into an expansion slot (make sure it's for the same bus on your motherboard and that you have a vacant slot).

Windows 7 and up will support SSDs. Don't know about previous versions.

You'll have to do some research on the motherboard online or if you have the old manual it may be there. Also, Google the make and model of the PC and you may find some specs that are still online.

Thank you Metricman.

I recently had to replace my laptop. It came with a 256 GB SSD One problem with SSD is size, they haven't caught up with HDD yet, so I installed a second drive in the laptop, a 1 TB HDD. I use the SSD to instal programs to and the HDD for storage. The speed is amazing.

SSD is still pretty costly and apparently they have finite times they can be rewritten to. SSD runs a lot cooler and is much smaller as well.

My desktop is going to be replaced soon as it's been around since XP was pretty much a baby and seems to be slowing drastically. I bought a desktop with a 512 GB SSD, I'll salvage my many HDDs to work with it for extra space.

I wonder if doing an image swap would work going from one desktop to another since the entire hardware profile will be different.

Even though my video edit system boots off SCSI, I have SE and Raid-ed SSD's for years, and they are an Eye Opener!!
Have upgraded all other computers with Boot SSD's....
I would say I have 12 or more of them in Single Ended or in Raid0 environments.... Granted, Raid0 is not used for boot, just Ultra Fast Media Storage....

I bought a 1 TB about 6 months ago and it sat on my desk for maybe 5 months because I just didn't want to take the chance of something going haywire. I installed it a little over 2 months ago using Easeus Todo backup and the job was perfect. My boot times went from 3-5 minutes to about 10 -12 secs. It is quick on everything. My computer is win 10 32 bit and was built about 8 years ago. I still have my win 10 on its 1 TB HDD "in case" but I don't ever see having to use it.

I keep three desktop PCs running in my house, building a new one every year or two to replace the eldest. About a year ago I finally built one with an SSD boot drive. The motherboard had an M.2 socket, and I got a 1TB SSD drive to go in that socket for only a little over $100. It is incredibly tiny.

Not only does it boot fast, but Windows updates install much, much faster on that machine. And my comparison is not to standard HD boot drives, but to Seagate hybrid drives I had used in my previous two builds.

Mind you, my slightly over $100 1TB M.2 drive is not highly rated among SSDs for speed. The thing is: SSD drives are so fast at random access compared to HDD drives that even a slow one is a wonderful improvement.

The trick is not to get too small an SSD for a boot drive. Years ago when they were expensive I built a machine with an 80GB SSD boot drive. For the life of the machine I was battling Windows which cluttered it with stuff I could not easily banish to another drive. It was so bad an experience I switched to other methods for the next three builds before finally coming home to my 1TB boot drive. Bliss!

I've been slowly converting all my drives to SSD. Expensive at first but the prices are coming down. The lack of heat, noise and slow spinup & response time is indeed impressive.

A word of caution though. I found out the hard way that these drives are not bullet proof. Although they are immune from mechanical failure, they are still susceptible to damage from electrical sources.

Four years ago, I lost an expensive (at the time) 500GB SSD drive to a nearby lightning strike while all the mechanical drives survived. As a result, I switched from internal to external SSD backup drives which I leave unplugged when not in use.

Another consideration is, it's often possible to recover data from the disk of a failed mechanical drive but not so a SSD.

Go to support.dell.com and enter your service tag to search for your Dell PC specs. I'm guessing you have either a SATA 2 or SATA 3 interface on your system. You can use any SSD with SATA interface. Samsung EVO seems to be the leader of the pack.

My old conventional HD started to have problems 4 years ago. My Intel Core 2 Quad PC was 7 years old in 2016. Replaced it with a 250GB SSD running at SATA 2 speed (due to the motherboard SATA interface). Today it is still booting Windows 7 at approx 12 second flat (to get to Windows login graphical interface). It took about almost 1 minute to boot with conventional HD.

I'm looking for a replacement PC. This time it won't be an Intel. It's going to be an 8 core AMD Ryzen system with NVMe M.2 SSD.

Some cloning software allows you to restore to an entirely different hardware. I personally have not tested how good/bad that is. I'd rather start from scratch on the the system, that is, format and install Windows.

SSDs are great. Just keep in mind that they do have a somewhat limited number of write cycles, making them less suitable for applications requiring constant logging or as a swap partition. The write-cycle limit is especially true for the cheaper models making use of low-cost Flash memory.

NAND type Write cycles supported
SLC - 100,000
MLC - 10,000
3D NAND - 35,000
TLC - 3,000
QLC - 1,000

If you clone/replace a conventional drive with an SSD, make sure that TRIM is enabled and move the swap partition to another drive or disable it entirely. You can turn it almost completely off without disabling it entirely in Linux by reducing the "swappiness" value which might be a desirable option but I'm not sure that you can do that in Windows.

MM, how can I tell what kind of SSD adapter my laptop has? This past December I bought an HP with a 256 GB SSD drive. When I query the details of the drive, HP reports that it is an Optain+238GBSSD. How do I know what SATA that uses? BTW, I don't even know what SATA stands for or what the significance of the different types are.

Phil

If you post your HP model number, we can look up the specs. Did you mean Intel Optane?

AHCI Mode for boot drive SSD upgrade:

The motherboard bios had been set to IDE mode for the old spinning hard drive. IDE mode will work for the SSD, which will run a lot faster than the old drive. To make it run even faster than that, the boot drive BIOS setting can be changed to AHCI mode, BUT:

It is not sufficient to make this change in BIOS because Windows will no longer boot up. Two registry keys must be changed when the BIOS setting is changed from IDE to AHCI mode. It would be easier to make a clean install of Windows 10. Before installing Windows, set the BIOS to AHCI mode and Windows setup will make the correct registry entries for AHCI mode.

For computers more than 10 years old, there may be no AHCI mode in the BIOS. If the motherboard has SATA, it should have AHCI. Get a BIOS update and it will probably have AHCI.

This only applies to the boot drive, and no other drives.

You want to make the computer run faster? A clean install does that, and AHCI mode is only one aspect of that.

The issue is the same for Windows 7 or Windows 10:

For Windows 7

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/922976/error-messag...

For Windows 10

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

I did both. When my two PCs were running Windows 7, I installed SSDs, changed the BIOS, and edited the registry. Later, when I did a clean install of Windows 10, Windows setup made the correct registry entries for AHCI.

dobs108

By different I mean everything, an entirely different machine with everything from the motherboard out different, except the USB plug in portable drives I'd use after set up.

I know a fresh install is the best way to go, have done it before many times, sometimes even on purpose

My wanting to do an image swap is due to the many little programs I have for various tasks that don't exist anymore. I'm sure I have setup exe's for some of them, finding them will be the problem among my many extra drives. I really like the way the ever slowing computer is setup, has to be nearly 10 years in the making.

In the end I'll most likely stick with the system as is when it arrives and try to find those helpful little add ons as the need comes up.

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You probably already got your answer from another forum member but let me add a few things. Most desktops have cabling that will support two internal hard drives. You simply need to locate that cabling, hook it up to an SSD (sometimes a cable and mount are required, maybe $20) and then clone the original drive to the SSD. Go into the setup and allow the cloned drive to be the boot drive and you are up and running. Once you are sure everything got transferred properly, format the old drive and use it for backup purposes.

I recommend Crucial drives unless you have very special needs like gaming. They are reasonable and their tech support (both online and in person) are a great help.

A 10 year old computer can benefit tremendously by the way.

That is exactly what I was talking about, restore clone to an entirely new system (motherboard/chipset, RAM, hard disk controller, graphics controller and system resources).

I agree that Crucial is the best. Not only for the hardware, but they have a utility called Crucial Storage Executive that works with the drive and evaluates its operation.

Over the life of an SSD, bad sectors appear, and the utility can check and correct that. The drive simply remembers which sectors are bad and avoids using them.

dobs108

10-4, just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing.

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Before you do anything download and run the Belrc Advisor (see . https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor). It’s free, run it on your PC and then print the report which usually is about 5 pages of details concerning your computer. Be patient when it runs, might take 2 to 3 minutes to build the profile.

The problem with reinstalling Windows is many people don’t have or can’t locate the original installation disks, files, etc. to reinstall everything. In addition all files are wiped out; all your email should you use Outlook, maybe your tax summary in Excel, stuff in Word, photos, your calendar, etc. In a perfect world everyone has multiple backups and al this wouldn’t matter. The truth is few of use live in that perfect world

Cloning works exceptionally well. The drive manufacturers are in the business of selling drives; they want to make the effort.

You don't have to know what SATA. The laptop is very new so it will be SATA 3 at 6 Gbit/s. All SSDs are correct for that. Your laptop also has faster AHCI mode mentioned in my post above.

SATA is a newer fast serial interface with a small plug the size of a USB plug with 4 conductors.

dobs108

It could also be an NVMe Form factor SSD. I know that Dell moved to that type drive about two years ago on their mid-range priced laptops.

That laptop is only a few months old. The storage may not even be connected to SATA interface. It may be an NVMe connected to PCIe interface and it is a lot faster than SATA3 6 Gbps. John from PA has said it.

Plunder says:
HP reports that it is an Optain+238GBSSD

I guess he meant Intel Optane SSD. That is an NVMe storage with PCIe interface. SATA 3 is obsolete.

The SSD is an Intel Optain+238GBSSD and the laptop is

HP Notebook - 15-dy0013dx

Phil

Data sheet at https://files.bbystatic.com/CDXQt%2Feb5Db9o06i028fkw%3D%3D/A... states the drive is a 256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 Solid State Drive. A video that shows how to replace the drive can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6RDWgVqWc.

Personally I would not replace the drive..."yet". It's a good quality drive but check how much free space you have on the drive. You want to have 25% to 40% free space; in other words something between 70 GB and 100 GB minimum. If you have that, there is no need to replace the drive. If you don't, then you should consider cleaning off the drive by getting stuff you don't use. One hog on space is the saving of photographs. I'm not saying get rid of them, but use an external drive for their storage.

If you want to see what the drive physically looks like, go to https://www.newegg.com/hp-ex920-256gb/p/N82E16820326777?item.... While there take note that the drive could be replaced with a 512GB for $88. The 1TB is shown out of stock but on Amazon is about $155.

If you need to replace the drive, the logical question is what do you do with the old one. Your HP does not have space for a second drive so I would suggest you buy an enclosure for the old drive. Then you would have external storage that could be connected to a USB port. Such an enclosure would run about $15 to $25. Get one made of aluminum (for heat dissipation) not plastic.

I stand corrected, but I am happy that the PCIe interface is even faster!

dobs108

That's an Intel NVMe SSD. It doesn't use SATA interface. The HD is plugged into PCIe interface and it's several times faster than SATA 3 (6Gbps) speed.

Going back to your original question:

"BTW, I don't even know what SATA stands for or what the significance of the different types are."

SATA (Serial ATA) is just a storage interface protocol, a successor to PATA (Parallel ATA). Remember the wide ribbon (PATA HD) cable?

Basically it starts out with SATA revision 1 (speed 1.5Gbps) which is faster than PATA technology. It's then replaced with rev 2 or SATA 2 (3Gbps) and another rev 3 or SATA 3 (6Gbps).

Yours is SATA technology successor. It does not use SATA interface anymore. It uses PCIe interface instead. It's supposedly multiple times faster than SATA 3 speed.

Good if you like that solution. I only do clone and restore on the same system with no hardware changes. I also do image (clone) backup at work.

The solution for my own PC, start from scratch (OS install) when I upgrade from conventional hard disk to SSD. I refuse to use the cloning software that comes free with the SSD purchase. I have no problem reinstalling software. Got them all. User data? Got them all backed up as well. Starting from scratch gives me a cleaner system without remnants of those software that has been uninstalled and I don't need to use any longer.

I could have gotten a PCIe SSD. I choose not to because It wouldn't be any faster on backups. It could only go as fast as the 6Mbps SSD it was backing up.

I will probably use my remaining PCIe slot for a 500GB SSD in the future as my C: drive. The other PCIE has a Graphic card installed.

Having a PCIe SSD will speed up boot and performance, but will not speed up backup. Will require another mother board with more PCIe slots for that to happen.

Wait... what? Where do you backup to? External USB 3 HD? NAS over wired/WiFi connection? Backup speed can only be as fast as the slowest connection. I wouldn't worry about backup speed. I can start it before going to bed. I'm fine backing up to USB 2.0 external HD.

I'm confused. NVMe (PCIe) speeds up the system by a lot. The whole goal of using NVMe is to get a faster system, not a faster backup. Also, does your motherboard support booting off PCIe HD? Mine does not. NVMe SSD is useless to me. I must replace my PC entirely to use NVMe. It is too old and does not support booting from PCIe drive.

For what to happen? Are you saying you get faster backup from NVMe (source HD) to NVMe (destination HD)? But why do you backup from internal drive to another internal drive?

Backup was external via USB. I had to leave my PC on overnight for a complete backup. Where I worked before, we were told to shutdown before going home because that's when the majority of attempted attacks occurred - mostly from asia. Old habits die hard and I have been "probed" at home before.

Since the one SSD is 465 GB (SATA3) and the other SSD is 447 GB (SATA 3), a faster drive for backup is useless as it can only store data at the rate of the slower drive it is pulling data from.

You may be assuming that I want to use a NVMe for backup. What I meant was that I would use the NVMe drive as my main drive and still use the 1TB for backups and use one of the SSDs (SATA3) for photos, etc.. My motherboard will support booting from a NVMe drive.

Maybe later I will upgrade my motherboard to something with more PCIe slots or I could go back to my onboard graphics and free a slot up. But currently I don't need more speed as I no longer do any CAD work or any heavy graphics, so I may stick with what I have.

How much are you backing up? I back up a 4 GB "My Documents" folder in about 12 to 15 seconds to a Samsung T5 1TB drive. I actually have two of these drive; one does an incremental backup on every shutdown, I doubt that adds 2 to 3 seconds to the shutdown process. The 2nd T5 does a backup of the My Dov folder once weekly.

These drives are often seen refurbished (Best Buy) for very reasonable prices. I got one of my drives for $106 and the other for $115. Best Buy Geek Squad uses them for repair work, then turns them in for refurb. Both my drives had about 6 hours of use and about the same "power-up cycles" according to Crystal Disk info, essentially new. Some of that was my time also my power-ups.

See response to chewbacca

It will not speedup MY backup at this time in space.

I have an SSD on a Dell Latitude that is approaching 10 years of heavy use. The laptop itself is failing, keyboard stops working occasionally, keys are gradually falling off from wear, two of four USB ports no longer function, and the latest battery (the second in its lifetime) has almost no useful life left.

But the SSD still works fine, no data loss, no issues. Its last task will be to delete the data on it so the laptop can be retired.

Deleting SSDs completely remains an issue as the controller prevents writing multiple times to the same space. With a spinning hard drive, you could just rewrite random data to the same place (and repeat as desired) and data would be gone. With an SSD, you can't do this, unless it is an SSD with a built in delete function inside the hardware. Still, the risk remains low for most data.

not up on this but seems like SSDs were a done deal around 5 years ago. I have a 2015 ThinkPad and a 2019 Dell and both have SSDs (former is personal and latter is work). My layman's understanding is that if I were to open them up, the ThinkPad's SSD more resembles what a laptop hard drive looks like, but the Dell looks more like RAM, is this a correct understanding as a lay person?

The older stuff I have all have traditional hard drives. The reason I feel it's not a big deal is we wouldn't expect a new Panasonic Toughbook to have a hard drive anymore (we'd expect it to be a tablet that inserts into a laptop chassis), nor an iPad, nor a Galaxy phone or tablet. We'd expect it to be solid state memory.

I've actually never had a hard drive fail, and although not near retirement, I'm no spring chicken either!

Yes, assuming Thinkpad SSD is SATA type and Dell is PCIe.

SSD with SATA interface looks like the good old hard disk. It sits inside a "housing" or a box. That's an 'older' technology compared to NVMe (m.2) hard disk.

SSD with PCIe interface (m.2 form factor) looks like a RAM chip with metal contacts on the narrow side of the chip. It's a newer and faster technology.

Your backup can only be as fast as the USB interface throughput. What's inside the PC (SATA 3 or PCIe storage) does not matter.

If your PC is connected to the internet, you (or your broadband modem/router) are getting "probed" every few seconds. Whether or not attackers will get to the PC depends on the setup.

256 GB - big enough & cheap enough.

Important stuff has to be backed up on a separate storage.

Won't let go will you?

Why do you continue to argue that my logic is wrong?

I have been using computers since before PCs even existed. I was using ECAP in the mid 70s (back when memory cores were the equivalent of hard drives) and have been an off & on programmer since. I have been upgrading my PCs for over 30 years. I may not be an expert, but I do know enough to be able to figure out the reasoning for what I did.

I will not respond to anymore of your posts.

Sorry if I offended you. No more replies.

Chewbacca, thank you for being a gentleman.

does blow my mind is until the work from home, I worked in a brand new office that opened 2019.

So company wide are these thin and bezel-less 24" dual monitors. I've been to many field offices, their monitors are thicker, although 24", and the arms are not fancy like ours are.

Then, open seating where the notion of the docking station is gone. I mean to me, one literally docked a laptop into a device, physically. It clicked. For how many years, me, 15+?

Now, with the 2019 Dell, everything is one USB-C connection. Handles it all, video, audio, power, etc. And the dock is a little rectangular box with a cable hanging out. Some might say so what? But I thought, wow. lol

but along the lines of SSD, imho there's no reason not to have one these days...

Years ago, I had heard of doing and image swap to a new computer then install all the drivers for the new computer but I don't think that's the way to go. Not sure if it would work on a new computer with todays operation systems. I remember back to win95, 98 and xp days. With win 10, many drivers self install and I feel you'd have many conflicts and you'd be fighting the errors. My image was for the same laptop, 1tb HHD to 1 tb SSD. It was straight forward, image, turn off, swap drives and turn back on. If you'r going to upgrade to a new computer, I'd do a full, fresh install

This would probably work with Windows version prior to 10. But with Win 10 it is my understanding that the OS installation keys itself to the motherboard. This prevents moving the drive from PC to PC and also, should you replace the motherboard that to will create an issue. Having said that, it is also my understanding that if you replace the motherboard, you simply contact Microsoft and they send you a new activation code.

I did not too long ago take an IBM desktop that was running Vista. I found a 128 GB HDD on eBay (for $10) that had been removed from the same type machine which had Win 7 Pro 64-bit on it. I installed that drive into my desktop, cloned it to a 512 GB SSD, and then installed the 512 GB drive with Win 7 back into my chassis. Then I did the free Win 10 update, no issues. So I essentially got a legal copy of Win 10 Pro 64-bit for the cost of the eBay drive ($10).

There are some 3rd party software suppliers that will sell you Windows 10 for sometimes $25 and up. But when you research this experts sometimes say it comes back to bite you after several months.

Depending on how old your laptop is, there's a very good chance the SSD interface is [NVMe]M.2 rather than SATA. The connector/interface for M.2 is a much better fit in most laptops so it's the most common one in newer laptops (last 5 years at least).

...ken...

I ended up getting as much of my 'stuff' off of the dying PC, including info needed to reinstall some of the programs I had paid for and I bought a new PC. Spent the weekend getting it to where the old one was minus a few things.

Acer Aspire TC-885-UA92 Desktop,
9th Generation Intel Core i5-9400 Processor (Up to 4. 1GHz)
12GB DDR4 Memory,
512GB SSD,
8x DVD-Writer Double-Layer Drive (DVD-RW),
802. 11ac WiFi,
Gigabit Ethernet LAN,
Bluetooth 5,
1 - USB 3. 1 Type C Gen 2 port (up to 10 Gbps),
1 - USB 3. 1 Gen 2 Port,
1 - USB 3. 1 Gen 1 Port,
4 - USB 2. 0 Ports,
2 - HDMI Ports,
1 - VGA Port,
Windows 10 Home,
USB Keyboard & USB Mouse