Drive recommendations

[Bionic_Flea]

I have a 5 year old PC that has a 2 TB hard drive on it's last legs that has mainly work files that are backed up.

I'm looking to replace it and seeking recommendations.  Should I just get another 2 TB HD -- like a Seagate Barracuda for under $50?  Something bigger or smaller?  An SSD instead?

Any suggestions?

[Marine X]

I would look and see how much of the drive you are actually using, and then look at the price of a SSD to cover that plus some room for growth. They are so much faster and more dependable that if you don't need 2 TB you can probably find a reasonable deal for one.

[Bionic_Flea]

43 minutes ago, Marine X said:

I would look and see how much of the drive you are actually using, and then look at the price of a SSD to cover that plus some room for growth.

 

I've got about 500 GB used up.  Looks like 1 TB SSD is about 2 times as much for half the space of the 2 TB HD.  Money isn't the issue, but that seems like a bad trade off at face value.  But if it's that much faster maybe it's worth it.

Edited December 31, 2021 by Bionic_Flea

[Luminara]

16 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

I've got about 500 GB used up.  Looks like 1 TB SSD is about 2 times as much for half the space of the 2 TB HD.  Money isn't the issue, but that seems like a bad trade off at face value.  But if it's that much faster maybe it's worth it.

If you're not frequently erasing or rewriting data on the SSD, the MTBF will be much, much higher than the HDD's MTBF (an SSD which you write data to, then only read from afterward, never erasing and only rarely overwriting, will last approximately twice as long as a comparable quality HDD).  If your back-up procedure involves frequently overwriting existing data, the the SSD won't last as long as it theoretically could (erasing flash memory causes the transistors to physically degrade slightly, and after a measurable number of erasures, they can no longer bridge the gap electrically and become inert, leading to data loss and corruption), in which case, a good quality HDD might be preferable.

 

There is fault tolerance built into SSDs.  Manufacturers know transistors will fail over time, so the device is programmed to transfer data out of failing blocks, if the data is accessible, and into known good blocks.  But it is finite, and the drive will begin throwing warnings.

 

And in regard to speed, I have Co* on an external Samsung 1TB SSD, connected via USB-C, and my zone load times are under 10 seconds throughout most of the game.  Atlas Park, the Wards and other high detail zones take the longest, and none of them take more than 20s.  Yeah, they're fast.

 

After having lost all of the data, consisting of over 500 films, a couple dozen full series of television shows and some personal files, when my portable wireless battery-powered HDD shit itself to death, I'll never use a standard HDD for back-up purposes again.

 

A pair of HDDs or SSDs in a RAID 1 configuration would be far better if your backups are irreplaceable.  Four drives in a 1+0 configuration would be ideal, giving you the best performance and data security.  But one drive supplemented with online back-up can be just as reliable, as long as you have the bandwidth and a good back-up site.  Probably not as much as you cared to know, just felt like putting the other options out there for you.

[Bionic_Flea]

I appreciate the responses.  I learn new things and ponder the options.

 

The HDD mainly has work documents and they do frequently get edited as drafts and older, complete documents used as templates sometimes.  But more than half are PDFs, photos, videos, etc. that will never change.  All of the work stuff is automatically backed up to Dropbox in the cloud.

 

Since it is an older computer, I don't want to put too much into it, as I expect I will be buying a new system within a year or two.  Like with cars, I tend to use computers until they just about die of old age.

 

I also got a free used Seagate 2 TB internal HD.  I guess I'll plug that one in, but I suspect that it may also be old and decrepit.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I've got about 500 GB used up.  Looks like 1 TB SSD is about 2 times as much for half the space of the 2 TB HD.  Money isn't the issue, but that seems like a bad trade off at face value.  But if it's that much faster maybe it's worth it.

 

After the very first time I experienced the difference between SSD and HDD for load times, I began replacing most of my HDD. I still have a few older and huge HDD hooked up and in use for static data I want to keep around, but no game I actively play exists on anything but SSD. So, add me to the "yea, it's worth it" crowd.

[Bionic_Flea]

I already have an SSD with Windows and some frequently used programs.  The HDD mostly has documents and photos.

[starro]

i think i did the same thing Bionic_Flea - I moved the OS to C:\,  Programs to D:\,  and I use my E:\ for data documents, files, music with backups from there.  I hate looking all over a file structure to find what needs to be backed up.

 

I am not a technical person, but I was surprised how easy it was to install the SSD, clone the data and reuse the old hard drives.   The boot time - wow.  New life in an old computer and even some things like copying files or working in Excel for my limited uses seems just faster.

 

My computer is probably 5 years old and I would really like to keep it on Windows 10 for a couple more years before I invest in new hardware, new Windows 11.  I think it might be my final desktop before I make the jump to a laptop for everything.

[WanderingAries]

Standard reply:

• If it's a desktop (with drive bay space), then SSD (OS, Apps, Games) + HDD (Data)
  • I've recently doubled the SSD capacity I had originally installed in 2010/2012 from 250 Gb to 500 Gb as I was getting uncomfortably low on storage
• If it's a laptop (with a single drive space), then a larger SSD and an external HDD for data not being accessed regularly (more than 30+ days old, etc)
  • Capacity wise, probably a 1Tb at this point so you'll get some mileage

[macskull]

Your computer likely has an M.2 slot if it's only 5 years old. If it does a higher-quality 1TB M.2 NVMe drive runs around $100 right now. You will probably not get peak performance out of it (or any SSD really, at that age) but it'll still perform better than a standard SATA SSD and when you upgrade in the future you'll be able to use it in your new PC at MAXIMUM POWER.

[marywenz]

It is worth considering the possibility of purchasing an external hard drive. Personally, I like the fact that with the help of services that deal with DATA RECOVERY, you can do information recovery. Like external hard drives, they provide portable storage space for files, allowing you to increase the total amount of memory on your computer, share files between computers, or simply keep backup copies of files safe in case something happens to the originals. So this will be a great solution. Think about it and accept it for yourself.

Edited April 13, 2022 by marywenz

[Hyperstrike]

If this is largely "cold storage", stick with a hard drive.  Capacities are almost universally cheaper for large amounts of data.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/cloud-storage/wd-my-cloud-home#WDBVXC0040HWT-NESN

You can get these in 4 or 8TB sizes.

You can also use these as a combination "local" drive and network dump (for other machines).
It's a technology called iSCSI.
Your OS will treat a drive from an iSCSI connection as a "local" drive.  Meaning backup programs generally won't refuse backups to/from them.
And for other devices on your network (other computers, your phone, a laptop), you can allot space for a simple network share as a means of file transfer that won't slow your local machine down.

[Bionic_Flea]

I ended up getting a 2 gig hard drive and a SATA to USB adapter.  I put the new one in the machine and have the old one using the USB while I run a deep scan and recover with Disk Drill.  It's taking forever but the program can start and stop (like when the machine sleeps or gets powered down) and pick up where it left off.  It's recovered a bunch of files, but the bulk of them are ones I already had saved in the cloud.  There are a few folders with docs that were not backed up or in the cloud and I'm hoping it will eventually recover them.

 

I did look at a possible new computer but what I wanted was about twice as much as I wanted to spend.

 

But I do appreciate all the info shared. 

[tidge]

I'm glad it seems to have worked out. Here is some jibber-jabber after the fact...

 

I had a quite old 2TB HDD die in my desktop... it was being used for game files, assorted programs that wouldn't fit on the original SSD, and for media backup. I was essentially doing a version of what @starro recommended. I was in the habit of making regular backups of the media, so at the time of failure I ended up only losing about 2 weeks worth of temp work. I will admit I was abusing that drive quite a bit at the end, as it was mid-pandemic and I was taking time to digitize a lot of my media.

 

A few months after that, a family member's laptop went on the fritz due to a dying HDD. Windows recovery saved everything, but it was painful getting everything back. After that, a new laptop was bought as an upgrade, this time with a SSD. The flaky laptop lasted another year with the HDD having been "manually" partitioned to avoid problematic areas... but eventually it gave up the ghost for good. Since storage is cheap, I ended up doing what @macskull recommended and added a M.2 drive AND a second SSD drive... I'm not using a RAID array, the first drive is for programs, the second is for media (and games). I spent ~$50 each for the two 500 GB capacity drives. While I was inside the laptop I boosted the RAM as well, although what I installed was probably overkill.

 

Much of my "cold" media storage is on standard (external) HDD, like @Hyperstrike suggests.

 

For the past several years I've been playing a weird game with external memory.... almost all of the "media players" (think "smart" TVs, blu-ray players) that the family uses, or has regular access to (keep in mind that there are many generations of "smart" TVs), work with FAT32 formatted media... and there is an inherent upper limit of maximum drive size (and individual file size), so I'm constantly on the lookout for 2TB drives. 2TB is the practical max size, although I thought I saw something a long time ago that placed the theoretical uppoer limit for FAT32 at 4TB... but I digress... My experience has been that the cost ratio for consumers to use standard HDD versus SDD / (micro)SD is roughly 4:1. I don't recommend using (micro)SD cards for general personal computing needs, but I find them to be incredibly convenient for content that I want to watch on a TV (or portable device). A small wallet can carry the cards as well as any adapters necessary to connect to a USB slot on a TV, tablet or phone. The only two issues I've faced with watching media this way have been (1) making sure that the adapter will actually fit into the USB slot of the device (geographically, there may be other connectors in the way) and (2) the native file navigation system of the device I connect to... I can't imagine what the usability experts were thinking for some of the interfaces I've seen! Casting directly from my smartphone means I'm familiar with the interface, but not all TVs play nice... and if I'm connected to external media with USB-on-the-go the adapter will drain the phone battery. I typically get spendy with internal memory for my smartphones, but I'm not keeping video archives on them... it also isn't practical for me to keep something like a plex server running.

[Hyperstrike]

My mom's laptop appeared to be on its last legs.
The HDD was in the process of failing.  And when an HD starts going, you can partition it any way you like.  It's doomed.
She kept grumbling about the thing and talking about buying a new one.  But didn't want to spend any money, and she couldn't find a decent replacement  if she did.

I finally got sick of it, and bought a 1TB SATA SSD.
I also bought an 8 GB memory upgrade to kick her to 16GB.

Then, while I was in there, I discovered an M.2 port...
Since I had a spare Samsung 980 Pro...

I wasn't able to clone it over unfortunately.  The HDD was too far gone.
So, clean install, minimal software reload.  And it was like she had a new laptop.
The thing boots in about 45 seconds and is, comparatively SCREAMINGLY fast.  Whereas before it struggled to do ANYTHING near the end.
So she now has a mobile workstation.  And the battery life is now about 2x as good as it used to be.

[Bionic_Flea]

Happy Mother's Day, Hyper-Momma!

 

[tidge]

That is very similar to the story of the laptop I just refurbished... I didn't need a personal laptop, except for rare cases of travel where the work laptop wouldn't meet my needs (ehem, privacy), so I didn't bother with the final HDD replacement until it really affected me. It's not as if I was doing much traveling during the pandemic, so the fact that I got the equivalent of 3 months regular use (i.e. ~25% of the year it held on) out of it surprised me. Storage always drops in cost (for the relative same amount) so waiting a year for the upgrade struck me as a no-brainer. I was a little worried about supply chain issues, but aside from GPU for desktops I didn't observe any particular shortages or price-hikes for components destined for older systems. Spending $200 on the upgraded RAM and storage was more appealing than completely replacing a laptop that was in otherwise good shape. I certainly could have spent less... maxing out the RAM was a bit frivolous, and using a second mechanical HDD in place of the SDD would have offered 4x storage for the same price.

 

Post-upgrade, the laptop performs better than it ever did (including lightning-fast boot times), and and I find it to be a decent second station for video/audio editing. It only has a 15-inch display, so even with its decent video card I don't use it for much gaming. TBH, my personal expectations for maximum lifetime of "mobile" computing platforms (laptops, phones) is about four years... usually it's the battery that determines end-of-life for me for those systems. The recently refurbished system has an easily replaceable battery, but I don't entirely trust that I'd be able to find a new (compatible) battery in a couple of years.

[Shenanigunner]

Somewhat old thread, but I concur with all those who recommended an SSD. I've had three aging machines get spectacular new life by swapping in an SSD for the boot and program drive. Data — not so much, a decent HDD is still probably a better value overall unless you work with huge video projects or the like from it, and even then, a 10K drive is insanely fast for most data.

 

But boot? apps? paging/swap? I'll never build another system without an SSD in that role, and will swap out an aging boot HDD with an SSD in a heartbeat. It's not just "faster," it;s like what jumping ahead a generation in CPU or doubling your RAM has traditionally done for system performance.

 

The modest extra $/GB cost is... irrelevant. You'll save more in sheer convenience and lack of lost time waiting for things to start and load.

 

Oh, and pro tip, especially for those fretting about MTBF and other end-of-the-world problems: leave your old drive or a similar one in the machine and do a weekly clone using Macrium. You'll probably never need it but a spare "hot" boot drive ready to go aids in comfy sleep. 🙂

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2022 by Shenanigunner

[Ironblade]

1 hour ago, Shenanigunner said:

But boot? apps? paging/swap? I'll never build another system without an SSD in that role, and will swap out an aging boot HDD with an SSD in a heartbeat. It's not just "faster," it;s like what jumping ahead a generation in CPU or doubling your RAM has traditionally done for system performance.

It's like night and day.  I don't do hard drives at all any more.  The system I'm on right now has a 500GB NVMe drive on my motherboard which holds Windows and all my data (every scrap of content I ever created, from spreadsheets to code I've written to photos I've taken).  Then I have a 2TB SATA SSD for games (which is about 60% full - ugh).  I have a batch file that runs each day to back up all my data onto the second drive.