Solid State Hard drives

[HadToRegister]

 

 

 

 

I would keep one large mechanical drive for backups and storage, they're cheap and they free up SSD space.

My NAS uses mechanical drives. That, and I have three SSDs in my system. NVME for the O/S, 500gb ssd for games and such, and a 250gb SSD that used to be my O/S drive. The only things I have that I am really concerned about not losing, is pretty much the mods I have downloaded. (all on the NAS) I am retired, don't need my resume any more, and most of my important docs are stored in some variety of 'cloud' storage. Be it in my 'sent' items in my email, or various sites I need to log into.

 

SSD technology has come a LONG way since they first came out. It's gotten to the point that the halfway decent drives are actually MORE reliable than their mechanical cousins. And with Western Digital being bought out, and the disappearance of their higher quality drives (black, and gold) SSD's are a much better investment as far as reliability is concerned. Where I work, we don't even stock mechanical drives any more. We keep a selection of Crucial SSDs on the shelf, and if we need to replace an HDD, they get an SSD. I have yet to see one of them fail..... (and I have been there for more than 5 years now.....)

 

I think the only advantage that mechanical drives have at this point is, if they DO fail, it is still possible to recover data from them. (depending on the type of failure, a head crash still pretty much assures the data is history......) Just not an inexpensive proposition. (the companies we deal with for data recovery from a failed drive, that we can't do with just software, START at around 700 bucks......)

 

As for power surges taking out drives....... I haven't seen one yet. System boards, power supplies, ethernet ports, yeah. They get smoked fairly regularly. :smile: In a couple REALLY nasty cases, I've seen the circuit boards on HDDs get burnt, but, that is extremely rare, and those systems were just plugged directly into the wall, no UPS, or Surge Suppressor at all.

 

According to theory, a UPS should isolate your computer, (and anything else plugged into it) from whatever commercial power is doing. So a surge *shouldn't* be able to make it to your machine, at least, not via the power cord.......

 

 

 

That's a bummer about Western Digital, that's what I used exclusively for years and they've served me well

 

Also, at $700 for STARTERS to restore Data, to me, it's gone at that point, I currently back up what I need to to 3 external Passport drives for now, but I'd like to have a full system image, one that only backs ups the things that have changed since the last time, (Can't remember if that's Differential or Incremental)

 

That's interesting about the SSD being more reliable than mechanical, but then again, "Mechanical Failure", and I always get nervous reading the MTBF specs, considering I leave my computer running 24/7

 

I'm assuming I could clone my Mechanical OS drive to an SSD and have a pretty painless switch, while slowly switching the rest of the drives over.

I've got 5 drives, 1 for OS, 2 for Games, 3 for Audio/Recording, 4 for Mods/Storage, 5 for Sample Libraries.

 

So, there's no problem/worries about Fragmentation etc, (I've read that you should NEVER defrag an SSD)

 

I'm sure the reason the UPS fried my USB on my previous MOBO, was the "Feature" it had, where it had a USB port that you could plug the computer into that would automatically shut down the computer if you weren't around during a power outage, and no doubt the UPS sent the *ZAP* right over the USB cable to my USB port on my MOBO.

(It also had a battery monitor etc)

 

 

The Board still works, just no USB.

[HeyYou]

We use Macrium Reflect at work. (the paid for version.) There is also a 'free' version, for the casual user, that still has all the features, and it works perfectly. I used it when I built my machine, since the windows 10 installer couldn't be bothered to see my NVME drive...... and it was just easier to do a quick install on a mechanical drive, clone that to the NVME, and then do the rest of the updates/setup. (not the first time I have had to do that either......) You can shuffle partition sizes, and the whole nine yards when doing a clone. It will also capture an image of your drive, such that if the drive fails, stick in a new one, boot from the Macrium recovery USB drive, re-image the drive, and down the road you go. With NVME/SSD drives, it goes QUICK. (a full win 10 install, without any user data, takes about 4 minutes.......)

 

Nope. Don't defrag SSD drives. It's own firmware takes care of that issue. I've also read that you should configure your computer to NOT shut down the drives to 'save power'..... but, we stopped worrying about that a while back. It just seems unnecessary. Drives have gotten a LOT smarter.... My personal machine is set to never go to sleep in any event. (it does turn the monitor off eventually. :) )

 

My electric bill sucks, so, when I am not going to be at my computer for several hours, I'll shut it down. (sleeping, or going to work, or leaving town for any appreciable length of time....)

[HadToRegister]

We use Macrium Reflect at work. (the paid for version.) There is also a 'free' version, for the casual user, that still has all the features, and it works perfectly. I used it when I built my machine, since the windows 10 installer couldn't be bothered to see my NVME drive...... and it was just easier to do a quick install on a mechanical drive, clone that to the NVME, and then do the rest of the updates/setup. (not the first time I have had to do that either......) You can shuffle partition sizes, and the whole nine yards when doing a clone. It will also capture an image of your drive, such that if the drive fails, stick in a new one, boot from the Macrium recovery USB drive, re-image the drive, and down the road you go. With NVME/SSD drives, it goes QUICK. (a full win 10 install, without any user data, takes about 4 minutes.......)

 

Nope. Don't defrag SSD drives. It's own firmware takes care of that issue. I've also read that you should configure your computer to NOT shut down the drives to 'save power'..... but, we stopped worrying about that a while back. It just seems unnecessary. Drives have gotten a LOT smarter.... My personal machine is set to never go to sleep in any event. (it does turn the monitor off eventually. :smile: )

 

My electric bill sucks, so, when I am not going to be at my computer for several hours, I'll shut it down. (sleeping, or going to work, or leaving town for any appreciable length of time....)

 

 

My electric bill sucks too, always triple digits.

 

What about Cooling?

Just the standard fare with Fans like for mechanical drives?

I'm assuming SSD can be retrofit into 5.25, and 3.5 bays?

Of course, I'm not sure how they're packaged, except for the NVME ones

 

OK, just watched a couple of videos about it.

I can get the adapters to fit 3.5 bay.

My new case already has some 2.5" bays as well

[HeyYou]

The only time I concern myself with cooling for drives, is in servers, where the drives are packed tight, and there are a lot of them. Never used them in gaming machines, or machines built for customers. (aside from the servers....) Most cases have enough airflow, that the drives overheating just isn't an issue. I only have on case fan in mine, and have not had a drive fail. I still have 80gb IDE drives that were still working fine, when they were replaced......:)

[TheGreatFalro]

 

 

I had to rebuild my machine recently. Went with an i7-9700KF, Asus ROG Strix system board, and a 500 gb NVME boot drive. It is now less than 30 seconds from pushing the power button, to windows being ready to go. :smile: I LIKE it.

 

OK, you said you went ALL SSD, so, what do you backup your system to?

Physical Drives?

 

Because I'd really like to make the switch myself, but I'm worried about Data loss from a power surge or just the power going off and coming back on quickly, because I live in a place where T-storms are a major problem in the Summer.

Lightning his so close once, that my old CRT TV now has a green splotch on it, and the built in Deguassing Coil was fried, along with my UPS being blown, and subsequently the USB bus of my Motherboard, so naturally I'm worried that I could suffer some sever data loss with something like that happens again.|

 

Do I invest in a physical external drive I can Image all my SSD drives to or?

 

 

 

I would keep one large mechanical drive for backups and storage, they're cheap and they free up SSD space.

My NAS uses mechanical drives. That, and I have three SSDs in my system. NVME for the O/S, 500gb ssd for games and such, and a 250gb SSD that used to be my O/S drive. The only things I have that I am really concerned about not losing, is pretty much the mods I have downloaded. (all on the NAS) I am retired, don't need my resume any more, and most of my important docs are stored in some variety of 'cloud' storage. Be it in my 'sent' items in my email, or various sites I need to log into.

 

SSD technology has come a LONG way since they first came out. It's gotten to the point that the halfway decent drives are actually MORE reliable than their mechanical cousins. And with Western Digital being bought out, and the disappearance of their higher quality drives (black, and gold) SSD's are a much better investment as far as reliability is concerned. Where I work, we don't even stock mechanical drives any more. We keep a selection of Crucial SSDs on the shelf, and if we need to replace an HDD, they get an SSD. I have yet to see one of them fail..... (and I have been there for more than 5 years now.....)

 

I think the only advantage that mechanical drives have at this point is, if they DO fail, it is still possible to recover data from them. (depending on the type of failure, a head crash still pretty much assures the data is history......) Just not an inexpensive proposition. (the companies we deal with for data recovery from a failed drive, that we can't do with just software, START at around 700 bucks......)

 

As for power surges taking out drives....... I haven't seen one yet. System boards, power supplies, ethernet ports, yeah. They get smoked fairly regularly. :smile: In a couple REALLY nasty cases, I've seen the circuit boards on HDDs get burnt, but, that is extremely rare, and those systems were just plugged directly into the wall, no UPS, or Surge Suppressor at all.

 

According to theory, a UPS should isolate your computer, (and anything else plugged into it) from whatever commercial power is doing. So a surge *shouldn't* be able to make it to your machine, at least, not via the power cord.......

 

Are you sure about Western Digital being acquired and the Black and Gold series being discontinued? I cannot find anything about either of those things happening in recent news, and from all I've seen WD is still an independent company. In fact, they just acquired two new companies in September. And Black and Gold drives are available right now on their website: https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-black-desktop-sata-hdd#WD5003AZEX

https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-gold-sata-hdd#WD1005FBYZ

 

It's still a much better idea to get an SSD, but I was wondering where you found that information.

[HeyYou]

I think they sold off that portion of the business to someone else. We can't order new black, or gold drives any more. The ones you are finding are likely drives folks had in stock. According to theory, this all happen a year or so ago...... and my boss was talking about it, looking for alternative solutions to server storage drives.

 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered WD also owned HGST. Some of the worst drives I have ever encountered. Right down there with Hitachi, and Toshiba. :D

[TheGreatFalro]

I think they sold off that portion of the business to someone else. We can't order new black, or gold drives any more. The ones you are finding are likely drives folks had in stock. According to theory, this all happen a year or so ago...... and my boss was talking about it, looking for alternative solutions to server storage drives.

 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered WD also owned HGST. Some of the worst drives I have ever encountered. Right down there with Hitachi, and Toshiba. :D

Interesting.

 

HGST is Hitachi, by the way, so that explains why you had troubles with it!

[JimboUK]

 

 

I had to rebuild my machine recently. Went with an i7-9700KF, Asus ROG Strix system board, and a 500 gb NVME boot drive. It is now less than 30 seconds from pushing the power button, to windows being ready to go. :smile: I LIKE it.

 

OK, you said you went ALL SSD, so, what do you backup your system to?

Physical Drives?

 

Because I'd really like to make the switch myself, but I'm worried about Data loss from a power surge or just the power going off and coming back on quickly, because I live in a place where T-storms are a major problem in the Summer.

Lightning his so close once, that my old CRT TV now has a green splotch on it, and the built in Deguassing Coil was fried, along with my UPS being blown, and subsequently the USB bus of my Motherboard, so naturally I'm worried that I could suffer some sever data loss with something like that happens again.|

 

Do I invest in a physical external drive I can Image all my SSD drives to or?

 

 

 

I would keep one large mechanical drive for backups and storage, they're cheap and they free up SSD space.

My NAS uses mechanical drives. That, and I have three SSDs in my system. NVME for the O/S, 500gb ssd for games and such, and a 250gb SSD that used to be my O/S drive. The only things I have that I am really concerned about not losing, is pretty much the mods I have downloaded. (all on the NAS) I am retired, don't need my resume any more, and most of my important docs are stored in some variety of 'cloud' storage. Be it in my 'sent' items in my email, or various sites I need to log into.

 

 

 

I keep one for large backups, games that I heavily mod for example, I back the entire game folders up and then if something breaks I can switch the backup in rather than mess around trying to fix it, Skyrim, New Vegas and Fallout 3 are well over 300GB which is a lot of space on an SSD. I also keep all the mods I've downloaded on there, that in turn is synced with Google Drive.

[HadToRegister]

 

 

 

I keep one for large backups, games that I heavily mod for example, I back the entire game folders up and then if something breaks I can switch the backup in rather than mess around trying to fix it, Skyrim, New Vegas and Fallout 3 are well over 300GB which is a lot of space on an SSD. I also keep all the mods I've downloaded on there, that in turn is synced with Google Drive.

 

 

 

Oh, I never thought about using GoogleDrive or OneDrive

[JimmyRJump]

I only use an SSD for OS and some programs (Samsung EVO 960 500GB) for the rest I have all Seagate Iron Wolf 8TB and Barracudas 4TB (eight of the lot, two in an IcyBox USB3 external enclosure with modular fan). My current case is a CoolerMaster Cosmos C700P and the hard drives don't need separate cooling as the drive bays are nicely spaced. My former case, CoolerMaster Cosmos II Ultimate had fans on the drive bays and that was needed as the cages had the drives sitting pretty tight. Best case for cooling and airflow I ever had was the first iteration of the Antec 1200 tower. Still have it and I might do something with it in the future if I can swap the front USB2 inlets to something more recent.