HDD vs SSD - is upgrading your hard drive ACTUALLY worth it?
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- čas přidán 18. 09. 2023
- If your desktop or laptop is slow, it very well could be because you still have a mechanical drive in your computer versus the more modern SATA SSD all-digital drive.
In this video, I show you real-world examples of identical mechanical drives, SSD drives and m.2 NVMe drives, with boot speed tests and app-opening tests so you can see for yourself exactly what kind of difference you can expect from upgrading from a mechanical drive.
Video links:
👉 Macrium Reflect (FREE) software:
www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...
Affiliate links:
👉 Sabrent HDD/SSD/NVMe m.2 dock and offline cloner:
amzn.to/3t1OETv
👉 PNY CS900 1TB SSD drive: amzn.to/3t7kAFN
👉 PNY CS900 2TB SSD drive: amzn.to/3ZmOK3U
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💢 ALL the tools that I highly recommend and use personally every day...
Hardware ---
◼ 142-piece magnetic electronics precision screwdriver set with 120 bits
👉 amzn.to/3exdNeb
◼ StarTech 4-bay USB 3.0 hard drive docking station 6Gbps
👉 amzn.to/3z6zNpG
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👉 amzn.to/3sAGZt0
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◼ Godshark NVME to USB adapter M.2 SSD to Type-A USB 10Gbps
👉 amzn.to/3FGw3O8
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👉 amzn.to/3pzJWIa
💢 Helpful/useful everyday software ---
◼ Ninite (used to automatically download and install your favorite software):
👉 www.ninite.com
◼ Defraggler (used to defragment and organize HDDs, NOT SSD):
👉 www.defraggler.com
◼ Open Office (Microsoft Office FREE replacement)
👉 www.openoffice.org
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Just a point of caution for anyone interested in going the M.2 route: M.2 is a _form factor,_ and supports two different flavors - SATA and NVMe. Though they look virtually identical, these have different connector configurations and are NOT interchangeable, so you'll need to verify which is available on your motherboard. Also, a SATA-based M.2 will enjoy little if any performance benefit over a conventional SSD as they are both bus-limited to SATA speeds, whereas NVMe (which sits on the PCIe bus) will see a five to ten-fold throughput improvement over SATA, depending on which PCI version the motherboard supports.
This.
👍
MVMe & SATA can be attached to the same connector, IF the connector and interface chip are properly sorted.
I have a Sabrent external M.2 enclosure, which accepts BOTH MVMe (M-key) AND SATA (B/M-key). It’s a modern USB3-rated, with USB-C connector.
Best $25 I’ve spent on drive adapter, solves a big problem.
And it has a hinged cover, rather than the ubiquitous slider cover. Nice.
It is also important to take into account how many PCIe lanes (not slots, lanes) your computer has as well as your generation of PCIe, and whether your PCIe is going directly to the CPU or using the chipset. For many people this isn't a concern. But if you are planning on trying to use a NVMe drive with 2 GPUs, or if you plan on multiple NVMe drives, you'll need to take this into account.
Beat me to it. “NVMe”, not “M.2”. An M.2 SATA SSD drive is no faster than a traditional SATA SSD. “Digital drive” is also odd terminology. A mechanical hard drive stores 1’s and 0’s, just like all others.
Once you go SSD, you can't go back. I bought my first 500GB SSD in 2016 for €165 and have replaced all hard drives to SSD by now. I have got a 4TB SSD for €135 this month as a game drive. The boot up, app opening and game load times are unbelievably faster with SSDs. It is a much enjoyable experience of using your PC.
Agreed!
Not only loading but framerate stability. Games work considerably more fluidly with far less stutters and frame drops.
For my money, SSDs are definitely worth the upgrade.
100% yes! That's what I hoped to demonstrate for anyone who perhaps didn't even know what an SSID drive was 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy
I upgraded from HDDs to SSDs three years ago, and at the time never thought to time the difference, but I do recall it was a substantial improvement. I just purchased a new computer with an M.2 and I installed an additional SSD. I am somewhat disappointed with the boot time, but that's a function of the BIOS, not the M.2. I still experience significant improvement in execution speed once the POST is finished. Overall I am very happy with my computer purchase.
@lifeisagift.cherisheverymoment awesome!
@AskYourComputerGuy any update to share on that medicate video you promised when you released that Ventoy video?
@bhuntin08 it's on the drawing board. Just got married 2 days ago and moving in 5 days. Got a backlog of videos planned 👍
And for old laptops, as an added bonus, your computer will be lighter, cooler and the battery life will get a (tiny) boost.
Exta bonus: your laptop is now less sensitive to vibrations and therefore safer to use in a bus or car
@milospavlovic7520 also an excellent point! 👍
Much more than a tiny boost.
@@milospavlovic7520 Yup! The solid state advantage. No spinning so no parts wear down - although SSDs do have a life span limit imposed by the maximum possible number of writes.
@@francoisleveille409 Yeah, but unless you are one of a few professions that use a lot of read/write cycles, like video editing for example, you will not reach even near to the full lifespan of your ssd. And if you are, you can just plan ahead that you need to occasionally replace it ahead of time, and to use the high-endurance ssd-s
Gotta love it when the video isn't filled with unnecessary talk nor editing, just straight and simply into the point and clear examples. Great vid!
Thanks! Video editing is a skill I'm trying to get better at. I appreciate the support 👍
Thanks Scott, clear and concise explanation. I recently converted an older Dell XPS 8500 to an SSD and a fresh Windows 10 install. The improvement in boot and app launch times is remarkable. I remember when the experts said increasing RAM was the best way to increase performance. While adding RAM does help, I never saw performance increases as significant as swapping the mechanical drive for an SSD.
Upgrading RAM definitely helps, but going from mechanical to SSD is like breathing life into a sluggish machine 👍
No upgrade jump is greater than a ssd in old machines. It's like a rebirth.
Upgrades in RAM are only seen after the OS has finished loading.
Windows 10 is poorly written and seems to assume SSD. It starts many threads simultaneously seeking disk; 60 or so threads doing a virus scan, another 60 threads indexing the hard disk, another set of threads synchronizing OneDrive. It clobbers a spin disk but SSD's do not have head seek latency or rotational latency.
My customers are ALWAYS impressed when I upgrade them from a HDD to an SSD.
Hard not to be after the first boot to am SSD. Love watching their faces 😂
YES. It's a simple upgrade that never fails to impress. I did have a Dell desktop once that had an M.2 slot but shipped with a HDD? That was like finding a unicorn.
@machdaddy6451 THAT is crazy! 😂
Glad I watched until the end! I was going to ask for a clone video. 🙂 Looks like you already have that covered! I'm looking forward to it 👍‼️
Next video is a step by step "how to clone" a drive 👍👍👍
As always this is great work, sir! Thank you!
Thank you so much! 👍💪
SSD drive swaps for Laptops works especially well.
Thanks Scott, picked up that docking station on Amazon in the UK for £45, fantastic piece of kit.
Good choice!
Very true. I installed my operating system onto an SSD. Best upgrade ever. I highly recommend it.
💪💪💪
It isn't exactly an "upgrade" more of a change. All SSD's have a WRITE LIMIT and generally ought not to be used where frequent writes and re-writes take place. Also, writing to an SSD is a rather complext process that requires to read an entire "page", update whatever cell needs updating, erase the page, and then write it. You cannot write 0's you can only erase the entire page and then write 1's where you don't want zeroes. (or vice versa depending on the default state of a page once erased).
SSD can be very slow writing large numbers of small files, slower than spin disks.
Nothing is faster at RANDOM reads particularly of large numbers of small files.
SSD's are not good choice for ARCHIVE since the data retention is not infinite. The electric charge on tiny capacitors eventually bleeds out. It takes some years of course.
I've been a PC enthusiast for many+MANY years and now I have 4 systems booting from M.2, using SSD's for Abobe & Ai upscaling transfer drives and then 8 HDD for long term storage. It's a great time to be a PC enthusiast!
Heck yeah! 👍
WOW!! Amazing... Thank you! :)
Another practical video, thanks. The "Sabrent HDD/SSD/NVMe m.2 dock and offline cloner" is available from Amazon down here in Sydney, Australia, for about the same price as you gave (post free as I have a Prime account). I'm worried about longevity of SSDs but this unit will help me to make regular clones of my SSD hard-drives as backups. 73, Ian
Nice! And highly recommended. Jury's still out about SSD longevity, but no argument at all about speed difference. Use SSD for your operating system and store your data on HDD and you should never have an issue 👍
Very helpful. Thanks for the education
Glad you enjoyed it!
Nicely done. Thanks.
Thanks for watching! 💪👍
Brilliant information. thanks
After watching this video I went ahead and bought additional 8GB RAM (my Dell desktop will run max 16GB) and a Kingston KC600 drive with an upgrade kit included. It cost me round about $100 and using Acronis, which I had on my desktop already, and following your video on how to clone a hard drive, the total upgrade was super simple and only took a few hours of which my actual work time was probably around 20 minutes. The old desktop is now running like a rocket so I couldn't be more happy with going ahead and doing this very affordable and easy upgrade. I have actually ordered an additional Kingston KC600 drive now that I know how easy it is, so I can do e.g. monthly backups using the cloning method. Thanks for a great series of videos on the subject I was looking for 👍
Fantastic! That's so great to hear 💪👍❤️
I noticed the benefits of SSDs right away when they first came out some 10 years ago. I started with the first OCZ Vertex SSD (I bought two, one failed after 4 months and the other STILL works today!), I have not bought any HDDs for booting a PC or laptop since. Of course, big storage HDDs capable of 8TB and more are a different matter.
I personally would never use any bigger than 1TB, if you loose an 8 TB you will loose a lot of stuff. I would rather 8, 1TB and a much less chance of loosing all 8 drives and 8, 1TB is a less to buy than an 8TB.
Get a 1TB or larger SSD as right now this is the crossover point for GB/$ for HDD vs SSD.
As Scott said, M.2 NVMe vs 2.5" SATA depends on your computer options.
Not really when you can get 2TB NVME's for roughly $70 right now, I've even seen 4TB models around $140, spinning rust can rest in peace these days unless you want even larger drives just for storage.
Ive been mounting 120 GB SSDs for my OS, andi'm using my existing HDDs (250GB to 1 TB HDD) where i place my songs and movies and pics, since im more concerned with having my PC turn on and off faster, i can wait 4 seconds for Kiss "Shout it Out Loud" kick on from the HDD. I don't game, so they program start times arent crucial, only the on-off modes.
I do have older laptops from the DDR2 era, like Toshiba Satellite LTs which i use to tinker with and go on vacation with aka expendable... and even with SSDs they are a joy to run, even if i have to run Linux Mint or Linux Kubuntu to run the Web faster on.
Enjoyed the video Scott - every day's a school day for me where computers are concerned! 😉Thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it
Amazing video. I've changed hundreds of hard drives to solid states for years for my friends and family. May I suggest that you can buy an hdd enclosure in order for your old hdd to be an external drive. (specially for laptop users who have no other sata\m2 slot)
Plus one here, I use a usb to hdd cable shucked from an 'ineo' hdd enclosure. Or for m.2 a 'Milipow' usb dock.
Thanks for the tip!
Great sound control. What mic do you use?
Believe it or not...this one :)
amzn.to/46TqbP0
Thank you sir!
You are welcome!
Thank you for the education! I have Acronis installed on my desktop. Can you comment on the use of Acronis vs Macrium Reflect for the purpose of cloning an HHD to an SSD? Which one is better to use? Thank you.
Both are great. Macrium is a little more user friendly IMO but both are quality programs 👍
Are the SDD model specific for HP laptops or one size fits all? Also do the drives have to be formatted for FAT or does the cloning processes do that automatically? I don’t use the laptop that often. Things seem to go quicker on the iPhone. Maybe I would use it more if it was quicker with this upgrade to SSD.
I enjoy your videos immensely. Thank you.
A 2.5" mechanical laptop drive is the same size physically as a 2.5" SSD drive, so it's an exact swap, connectors and all. Only exception is you have a laptop with IDE connection, but those haven't been made in 20 years. You don't need to format, the cloning process does that. I do when I clone because, as shown in the video, i want to visually see the target drive labeled before I start. But you can just select the unallocated drive and clone. It does the same. A lot of people are OCD like me, so I add that extra step for them 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy I have seen some weird stuff from early ssd days, I think on hp professional laptops from circa 2014. I don't think it was msata or something else uncommon but standard, I think it was proprietary. However I haven't seen anything like that on anything newer, the weirdest thing being occasional msata or shorter m.2
I am having so much fun learning from you. I have a question about the sabrent USB product that you show on this video. I have a relatively new computer that only came with 128 SSD drive. I have quickly run out of space. I did buy a crucial 1T external SSD and I am trying to learn how to use that to make my microsoft office save files to that external drive. have not fully figured that out yet. I have thought about upgrading the internal ssd drive but I am not sure how to get the ACER factory settings file to work on a new internal ssd if I replace it since I won't have access to the partition that has that image. I was thinking then of buying this sabrent USB product that you talk about: would it be really easy to take the ssd drive out of my computer and use this Sabrent device to "clone" my current SSD drive onto a new larger one? Thanks for ll your great videos.
ONe last thing: do you have a video that shows how to use an external SSD drive to have Microsoft Office Save files to instead of my small C drive? I don't want to have to copy and move them over all the time.
Start here, this will help with your first issue:
How to guarantee ZERO data loss if Windows crashes
czcams.com/video/DCQh7thkYvI/video.html
Excellent video. Does an SSD drive consume more or less power than a mechanical drive? I am worrid out over taxing my power supply.
SSD always have a lower power consumption. No electric motor to spin the platter, no electric coils moving disk heads back and forth…
Great info. Thanks.
You're welcome! 👍
I've become an author in my old age (currently 13 books up on Amazon) and laptops are the most convenient PC for me to use: Back hurting from sitting in place X too long? Grab the laptop and move. Using SSDs ensures that motion can never affect the SSD and a drop of a few inches if my hands aren't up to the laptop's weight today won't affect the SSD. Even on a 10-year-old Dell laptop, the SSD makes a VERY obvious improvement. I had to connect an ancient mechanical hard drive to retrieve some archived information and it was S-L-O-W ;-)
My longest book is 300,000 words and loading that in Word on a Dell E6420 from 2012 is acceptably fast from the SSD.
I use Macrium Reflect and a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter cable that has a transfer speed of 5Gbps. It's very convenient because you can clone an HDD to an SSD for greater speed or clone a backup SSD of your operating system just in case.
Excellent!
Thanks a lot!!
I would like to get an external drive that can store personal files long time and as well as a few files or games that can be run on the go. Is SSD a good option? Also, is pendrive a good option for a long time backup for small sized files?
Thanks so much for your help. Its not as intimidating as it seems
Glad to help! 👍
Amazing video Thank you so much, I have a small question My laptop Dell 7th generation core i5 64 bit which ssd brand do advise me to purchase?
Samsung is the industry leader. I've had a few that failed out of the blue for no reason. I'd recommend going with the highest reviews down until you get into your price range and the pull the trigger. Corsair, PNY, Western Digital, also great brands 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy got it 👍🏻 thanks again 🙏🏼
I have been experimenting with stable diffusion on my desktop using my archival drive (spinning rust) it was taking 6 minutes to load the model then 1 minute to process it. I upgraded to an Intel d7-p5600($369) and it takes 2 seconds to load the files now.
Thanks for the great content. One question, does the Sabrent dock do EIDE as well as SATA?
Unfortunately, no. IDE is such an "old" format, it's not even addressed anymore. Let me find you am IDE reader (like the one I upgraded from) 👍
This *should* work for IDE to SATA:
amzn.to/3vdOQA8
Thanks for the information. I have a external EIDE hard drive bay, was just wondering if this was a all in one solution. Hope you have a nice holiday season. @@AskYourComputerGuy
I've had an M.2 NVMe SSD as my main boot drive in my PC for the past 3 years. I also have a 4TB HDD for media and games. I'm thinking of getting a SATA SSD the same size as my current HDD to use for gaming while keeping the HDD for music, pictures and videos. Would the SATA SSD improve my gaming experience?
Versus an HDD? 100% yes!
Just a question for clarification here. When you use the Sabrent USB docking station one still needs to download the Macrium Reflect software to the hard disk drive in order to clone that drive to the SSD? When you said it was a stand alone cloner I thought maybe no software program was needed. I'm a newbie to this process.
Incorrect. The Sabrent cloner can work offline as well, no software needed. Macrium is my choice for "in use" cloning but if you have an SSD you want to clone to m.2, you can do it all disconnected from any computer 👍
If you are upgrading to SSD which has more GB storage than the HDD you are cloning, does the cloning device automatically expand the SSD’S partition to its full capacity? Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I know very, very little about computers. I have merely seen this topic addressed in another video. Can’t recall who the content creator was or the exact context.
@gins8781 by default it will duplicate partitions. You can go to Windows disc management and extend your OS partition in about 5 seconds, no problem
Running a Dell Optiplex pre-built PC that I converted into a lower end gaming system. SSD was a huge boost in performance on most of my games, my loading screens are shorter, my frame timings in games is way smoother, and booting my PC is no longer something that takes nearly 5 minutes each morning. Not to mention launching any programs or games is only a few seconds. Love it.
Nice!
When I assembled my current desktop I installed NVMe for my operating system on the MB. I get really incredible speeds. I have another NVMe for data needs when speed makes life easier. I then keep an old platter HD for my long-term data storage where speed is unimportant. Because I am a systems engineer I keep large amounts of data and make more all the time. In fact, after the first of the year, I will be spending several weeks in Western Europe helping troubleshoot a system I finished designing. I looked at the folder where that data is stored and it is almost 2 GB of data. I agree with the channel owner about his comments about keeping advice simple. This is why I recommend if you don't understand the difference between NVMe from SATA, or don't understand what a socket means as well as what memory speeds mean, PLEASE don't buy anything until you have spoken to somebody who does. Last year I got a phone call from a man who had just purchased a MB and a processor and could not figure out why his system had no video. It just so happened I had a processor that had graphics onboard that fit his socket.
👍
I have only 2.5gb left on my existing c:drive SSR. It's an MSI latop with windows 10 home software (manufacturers EOM software). Great laptop but it's running out of space. Do you think I would be ok increasing it to a bigger SSD? or am I likely to have issues with windows being configured and locked to the old harddrive/hardware?
You won't have any issues upgrading to a larger drive. Here's how to seamlessly clone one to the other with no data loss or downtime :)
How to clone a hard drive - EASY step by step walk-thru!
czcams.com/video/-89EcTjzl4M/video.html
@@AskYourComputerGuy Great! That's good to know. Thanks very much. I'm watching it now.
@@AskYourComputerGuy Thanks. That other video looks great too. I will look at doing this ASAP.
@AyupStuggy great! Let me know if you have any questions 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy Ay up Scott! Brilliant! That's very kind of you. If you fancy watching someone suffer as he attempts to get fit, them I'm your man! I will let you know how I get on with the SSR, probably in a week or two as I have another bike ride to prepare for amongst other things. God Bless you :) Stuart (AKA Stuggy, my nickname!. Ay up is a Northern greeting here in the UK :)
Can you make a video on types of SSDs like SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC thanks and each of the benefits
That might make for an interesting video. I'll put it on the drawing board 👍
I have an 11 year old Gateway DX4380G that has served me well but whenever I'm using it the cpu runs between 90 and 100 percent and the hard drive sounds like it's on it's way out. My question is, would it be worth it to install a ssd or get a newer computer with a better processer ? Thanks
Did you do these tests with all three drives plugged directly into the motherboard? Not from the USB drive dock you have? (For which I don't see the link for that Sabrent drive dock with the M.2 port in the description) A M.2 drive over USB would be terribly slow going about 460mb/s performing like a SATA SSD. Also you didn't mention the importance of CACHE on SSD. Cheap drives often have no cache and often perform much slower than they should with comparable drives of different brands that cost a bit more that do have cache. Sure they still perform faster than HDDs, but even HDDs have cache. SSDs without cache will run speedy for reading/writing smaller files, but large file transfers will quickly slow down to a crawl.
Yes, connected to the main board not via usb which would be crazy slow! I'll check the link again but I'm pretty sure it's in there. Just checked, it's there: amzn.to/3t1OETv👍
SSDs are a game changer. My mom's PC was a paralyzed slug and now it's a cheetah. Honestly, it's way faster, either to boot up or to start programs. My laptop has dual boot (W10/Ubuntu) and the NVMe is also snappier than any HDD.
Nice! 👍👍👍
I made a a lot of little old ladies happy swapping out their spinning rust. I made some coin, too. - Several years ago. Yes, you have to upgrade. It's a no brainer. Where have you been?
What app did you use to monitor your boot times please?
It's called Boot Racer. You can get it here:
greatis.com/bootracer/index.html
Did you boot the hdd and ssd clones from your external dock you were using? If so, no wonder it was 9min and 1min. I've gone from 5min internal to 25sec internal for hdd/ssd
No from the main board. My BIOS always takes forever for some reason. Gotta look into that at some point, but all three were done the same way to keep it consistent 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy gotcha. Was just curious. That did seem like a long time for ssd but if was a clone of your current system, it's definately possible.
@WayneWatson1 👍
on older laptops - one from 2008, the other from 2010 - I replaced the OS HDD disks with SATA SSD's, and they both started in 30 seconds (give or take a few seconds). So, it works on older computers.
Absolutely! And love the handle 😂
Good info
Thank you! 👍
Thank you for these videos. Our computer is in the shop right now. The computer is old (2010). We were told mother board and hard drive are the problem. We are upgrading to a used system. Question they only had a 500 mg Solid state hard drive on hand. They are also moving a second hard drive I had installed recently into the old computer, which is 2tb. Can I clone the 500mg hard drive with another 2tb hard drive without causing it to make partitions?
When you clone a drive, the new drive will be overwritten with all the data and partitions from the source drive
I have an older HP powerbook that I use to control one of my 3D printers. It used to have a 500Gb WD blue 7000k rpm slim drive and boot times for Win 10 were 2+ minutes to get to the desktop with all background apps up and fully loaded. I recently installed an older 128GB Intel SSD I had kicking around, cloned the drive, changed no settings and boot time from dead off to fully running is now sub 30 seconds. This alone is worth the upgrade.
Nice!
There is one thing you didn't clarify in the video, were you using fast boot up which is on by default I think or
was it disabled. I have a sata ssd with windows 10 on it. With fast boot up enabled, from startup to desktop screen
I timed it at around 25 seconds. With a normal boot up it takes around 5 and a half minutes to get to desktop screen.
👍
Hey would you Defragment a HDD drive before Cloning to a SSD drive?
Good info, good vid. Little dsapointed that you didn't touch on SATA bottlenecks and SATA limits or the insanely cheap prices for large HHDs and HHD RAIDs for back up.
Fair. But for most average people, even without the the finer points, the differences between the 3 variants alone might be enough to make them want to upgrade 👍
On Windows 11, the Windows Subsystem for Android requires an SSD and so does Google Play Games Beta for PC
👍
Just another reason to avoid Windows 11 then.
I've used Macrim Reflect before an I'm pretty sure it only copies up to a certain amount of partitions (not enough for your regular Windows factory install). Considering you're installing a Crucial SSD, its generally better to use their Acronis software and that will clone as many partitions as you through at it.
I ended up doing this years ago with an ASUS laptop I had. When I purchased it, it's specs were up there. Not the fastest but not far off - it had an A10 AMD with 16GB RAM. Swapping over even to a SATA SSD sped it up considerably from read speeds of 100MBS to generally 400-500MBs. I got at least another 3 years out of it (8yrs total) until there was a dodgey Windows update that aided in bricking the mother board LOL. After a replacement MOBO was sourced, it got a new lease on life for my daughter. It still runs Windows 10 pretty well. Considering the cost of the SSD was about $150 for a 1TB, certainly cheaper than the $1500 for a new laptop at the time.
But as you said, you also have to look at what external peripherals ports you have. Not much point upgrading something that only has USB2.0 connections unless you're re-purposing and already have the hardware there from another computer.
Can't speak to that. I think mine had at least 5-6 partitions and it copied fine. If not, there is always other programs out there without those limitations 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy You' might have an older version of the software? I'm sure I used it years ago as well to copy over and it worked as you said. But the latest version might be limited as I wasn't able to use it recently.
@peterschmidt9942 the link in the description is to Macrium 8.1 which is the last version you can use for free, per Macrium. Same version I use in the video 👍
My old desktop from boot to usability was approx 45 minutes.
Even with a good quality 9600 rpm seagate HDD.
After switching to a Samsung EVO SSD that time dropped to 2 minutes!
All your file conversions, file copy or transfers, video editing, maintenance scans and backups now happen in a few minutes. My pc saw a whole new life and I started enjoying it again. VERY WORTH IT.
Since the system is being opened up to install the drive that's also a perfect time to also max out your ram.
Very nice!
I shifted (cloned) my OS to an M.2 drive on my PC and the difference in boot speed is to say, startling.
On the laptop side of things, I have an old Toshiba A660 gaming laptop and the battery just wasn't charging anymore.
I called a place for a new one and while I was waiting on that, bought a 1TB SSD to put in it.
A really odd thing happened when I went to install Win 10 on the SSD, now installed in the laptop..... the battery started to charge again, so double win.
Old laptop with a new OS and SSD in it and no battery to buy.
I called the place I was getting the battery from to cancel my order, would have been a dick move not to.
Now all I need to do is find two 4 GB ram sticks that are compatible with the laptop, a little difficult being DDR3!
Check Crucial.com, you'll find it there 👍
I'm surprised you didn't mention the other obvious perks of solid state drive: the absence of all mechanical parts resulting in no noise, no vibration, less heat and last but certainly not least the sturdiness: no risk of failure following a shock or even a fall.
Benefits for sure. But for 99.98% of people, speed is the bigger issue. Those are just gravy 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy SSD's definitely win on speed, which is why I use them. I get W10 login screen in around 15 secs. Before the upgrade it was around 10mins. But mechanical drives are way more reliable in my opinion (unless dropped or something). So far, my failure rate for SSD's is 50% and when they go, they go really quickly. I haven't had any desktop hard drives fail in over 25 years. They just get retired due to obsolescence. I do daily backups to physical drives because I consider SSDs high risk.
@@toby9999 yeah and as far as i can tell after start up hdd or only about a 10th of sec behind the other to options so honestly if your doing mostly the same activies i don't see the benefits to the other and like you said they are high risk and have built in death dates after so many reads and rewrites. think most companies moving to this type is for profit plan and simple hdd last way past there rated live spans and that kills profit.
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My laptop has an M.2 and I use that but also a HDD for the data. Would swapping the HDD make a difference?
I'd keep the HDD if you're using it for data, as HDDs are still the better option for longer-term data storage.
Only when accessing the files on that drive. Won't change boot speed or app speed unless those apps were installed to that drive
SSDs and nvmes have always been worth putting the OS on.
Anxiously awaiting your next video on switching from rotary phones to digital dial
Lol I think this video might be about 10 years behind
You'd be surprised how many people still have mechanical drives 👍
10 years ago SSDs were just starting to become affordable for regular consumers, and if you wanted to fit one in a modest build you had to go with a 120 or even 60 GB drive to keep within budget. Forget about anything bigger unless you felt like devoting half of the budget to your storage solution. And back then there was not as stark of a difference because Windows 7 and 8/8.1 were not built around the assumption that the user would have one, so they ran "fine" on a mechanical drive. It's really only when we were a couple years into the life cycle of Windows 10 that Windows started all of it's background bloat hammering disk I/O that the SSD really became necessary. And yes, there are still folks with mechanical drives - though I do think that nowadays it's hard to find a new computer for sale that doesn't have an SSD of some kind, thank god.
@jeffb.6642 👍
I just put a cheap 500gb SSD in a friend's old laptop that only has 4gb memory. I installed MX linux with a 20 gb swap partition, and it's working really nicely. It's not zippy - but it's way faster than it was with the old hard drive and Windows 10 on it - that was impossibly slow. it'll be great for day to day things. And with lots of things open simultaneously, using all the memory and 4gb of the swap, there was only a little slowdown - the SSD is fast enough that the swap file works really well. It'll never be a gaming laptop, but I'm really happy with the result.
Well done 💪👍
I think that type of upgrade would be more like upgrading from a turtle to a jet!
Hello what do you think might be going on? why is my wirless keypad keeps losing its driver?, This only happen when its coanected to a android TV box. ( MXQ pro 10 ) I plus the i put the little pick for the wirless in to my laptop and download the drivers it will work for 30 min or so .... Is there anyway to fix this???
Usually I would point to a possible hardware failure. Depends on how long it's been behaving that way. Also, can't speak to why it only happens plugging into Android (not my specialty). I would try an alternate wireless keyboard and if you continue to have issues, it could be a Windows issue instead 🤷♂️
Having a heck of a time downloading that cloning software. Any others you would recommend?
Clonezilla is open source. Acronis True Image ($), AOEMI Backupper ($), Norton Ghost ($)
Thank you
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The one thing to keep in mind is that if your PC does not have an M.2 connector, and you buy an addon PCIe card to use a M.2 SSD, you will be able to use it, but you will likely NOT be able to boot from it. BIOS needs to support NVMe in order to boot from a M.2 drive, and it's likely your motherboard's BIOS will not have that support that if it never had a M.2 connector. You might find BIOS updates that allow older motherboards to support NVMe but it's likely NOT from the manufacture of your motherboard.
Often they are 3rd party hacks and that can come with risks bricking your motherboard if you use the wrong BIOS. There are tools you can build your own custom BIOS, and install the libraries you need (e.g. NVMe), but again, it's risky, unless your motherboard has a button on the back for emergency BIOS flashes from a USB stick so you can bring it back to original settings.
Good point. For older machines 2.5" SATA SSDs are dirt cheap so just go with that option instead. Cheapest decent drives (Team, Silicon Power) on Newegg right now are 250 GB for $17.
Good points. I recently found out that not all computers can boot from an M.2 NVMe SSD when installed via PCIe adapter board. It could still be used as a storage drive, but could not be booted from.
@@mickfreeley6054Yes they are PERFECT for old laptops that still have a 2.5" SATA drive in them.
Good tip
I still own HDD for my home media server stuff and bulk storage, but aside from that the price is definitely worth buying SSD for boot drive and secondary drives for games etc.
Nice video about hdd and ssd
by today standard ssd is the way to go its just fast and if the write speed is too slow its will cause some issue also
You should talk about pagefile since that's also quite important in some aspects
Form my understanding some program need to have pagefile to run without any issue
SSD are the way to go. Only reason to have a mechanical hard drive is if you need a lot of space for storing files (like 4TB plus.) Even then I would recommend haveing the boot drive be an SSD and having the mechanical as a secondary drive.
Agreed. Will be making a follow-up video, as I have angered the "experts" 👍
On my customer's systems, I prioritize ram, then hdd to ssd. 99.9% of the time I get complaints from people about it being slow, it's because windows 10/11 is being run on systems 8gb or less and it's hammering a hdd and it's nerve rackingly slow.
A friend bought a brand new system from dell and the idiots sold him 8gb and a hdd for windows 11. They told him he would have to pay for support because it wasn't a failure that was part of warranty, which was true, however, it was their stupidity for selling him a slow machine to begin with. Now, I could have just added 8gb more and it would have been like a new system, but it would have still been slow to boot and run programs. Also, adding an ssd alone would have made everything faster, including it using a paging file like mad. Still, they are BOTH cheap and together, makes system like new.
I have done this to a lot of laptops also and it's like a new system and they are very happy they don't have to spend 3-7 hundred on a new system, only about $50. I always do windows 10/11 memory upgrades to 12-16gb. So, they don't even hit a page file to begin with, or rarely and even if they do, it's going to an ssd.
I just use Acronis True Image to do clones of the hdd to ssd. It's never failed me
I have got a 2014 Toshiba laptop with 1TB HDD. I've taken very good care of it but it's making funny noises & I am finally looking to buy a new laptop. My dilemma is I am trying to decide between an HP with 1TB o SSD or another HP which has a 256 GB SSD with a backup 1TB HDD. The one with both SSD and HDD is actually $210 more expensive. Looking at how much of the 1TB I have used on my current laptop it's only 71 GB. My only concern with the SSD is I read there is a limited number of rewrites- I don't understand what that means-vs the HDD which is more durable. Please help educate me on what will be best for me. By the way I am not a gamer. I just use my laptop for writing, office-excel, pdf-basically productivity and using streaming apps like CZcams. Any advice is appreciated.
Great question! Most SSD drives have around 5000 full-write cycles. Meaning you'd have to completely write the entire contents of the drive 5000 times before you're in any danger of replacing. Spend the extra money, put your OS and programs on the SSD for speed, your important data on the 1TB drive (with some kind of backup) and you'll be fine.
@@AskYourComputerGuy Appreciate the response. Just so I understand your answer you think it's a good idea to choose the laptop that has both the SSD with the 1TB HDD backup? Thank again. Your videos are great and you have a new subscriber!
@tritosac that's what I would do, simply for speed AND data archive. If the extra $$$ isn't a good option, you can always split your C drive into 2 partitions (in case you have to reinstall Windows without touching your personal data). I made a video on how to do that. But, if you go with the one HDD option, your Windows won't be as fast. Personal preference, but I got you either way. And thanks for the support 👍
SSDs are a game changer. Doing IT support for 30 years, when I redo a PC or laptop and replace a mechanical drive with an SSD it brings tears to my client’s eyes. Definitely a cheap alternative to give new life to an aging computer.
You forgot to mention that the short life of the SSD also brings tears to your clients eyes
@rafchurchlawford4469 that's where having solid backups and even a drive clone come in real handy.
Knock on wood-I haven’t had an SSD fail on me and I’ve been using them since they were SUPER expensive and very small. In fact, I still have an 80 Gb Intel SSD that I bought many years ago.
@scott4918 lucky you! I've had a couple go bad, and some of them have lasted longer than expected 🤷♂️
Obviously they aren’t used for important data!! Love your channel, keep it up!!
My biggest HDD is 8TB for my Data… 1TB for my OS'(I actually STILL dual boot Linux and Windows)… does the rpms make a difference between mechanical drives as well? 🤔🤔
I've never regretted swapping an HDD for an SSD as a primary (OS) drive and every SSD I've ever owned, I still own, still use, and haven't failed me yet. (Not referring to M.2's, but the one I have is also solid so far.) I still use HDD's for storage in almost all my builds, so they're by no means obsolete.
Can you clone a current Win10 drive to an SSD without hitting problems with Microsoft registration?
100% yes
Hello computer guy, i know my quiestion might be out of context but my audio input either from jack (zsn pro x) or Bluetooth (baseus) wouldn't working properly, i have rog strix 15 and windows 11, what should i do. Thanks in advance :)
Can you test that same device in another machine and it works? If so, could be drivers on your ROG
@@AskYourComputerGuy yes already to it! the mic works now but the flicker wont go away, any ideas what's the particular driver should i update? i didn't think it was the audio driver, i could be wrong🤔
Excelente vídeo
Thank you!
It should be outlawed to use a spinning hard drive as a boot drive for Windows 10 or newer.
Windows 8/8.1 it was not bad. SSD was of course better.
But Windows 10 and (presumably) 11 - I'm not masochistic enough to install it to an HDD - are borderline unusable when installed on a hard drive.
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No it shouldn't, a lot of people still use older hardware with hard disks in them.
Just repaired a dual core 7th gen i3 laptop for a lady, put an old 120 GB Intel drive I had laying around in it with new windows. She was astonished how fast it was. Funny I think that was my first SSD I ever bought. Now I have quite a few TB of them, about to get a MP34 4TB TLC. Any SSD is better than any HDD regardless, but stay away from QLC.
An SSD, being notably swifter, can tangibly reduce loading times, particularly on older hardware configurations.
Agreed!
Well, my ten year old MSI laptop with an old mechanical, spinny HDD still seems to boot into Win 11's log on screen within about thirty seconds... Maybe another twentyish seconds to log in and load the desktop. I think that's very usable for my needs.
People keep telling me it should be way slower because it's an old HDD. What am I doing wrong?!? 😢
Nothing. Ignore them and enjoy your laptop 👍
@AskYourComputerGuy I honestly can't believe the whole laptop is in such amazing shape. I've dropped it a few times, yet every piece of hardware inside seems to still be running great. I did a drive health check and the HDD isn't even beginning to show signs of failure. That thing is a... Beast. I was thinking of getting an SSD to connect externally, but I'll wait until the HDD seems to actually have any real issues. 🫡
@PatrickDAllen1 probably a good idea 👍
@AskYourComputerGuy I mean SSDs are cheap now, yeah, but it's still money spent when the old drive is still working great. For only a little boost in write speeds and load times.
@PatrickDAllen1 the key is that you have the knowledge. Now, apply it when and if you ever need it :)
Hi great video, i was wondering i bought a used ThinkPad which has a intell ssd, however i would like to change it to a sk hynix p31 , would i just take the old drive out put knew one in then boot from usb? i reset my pc using don't save anything and restore from local, but it just reloaded win 11 Pro? the thing is i don't want to clone the old one. thanks in advance 😊
That is correct 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy thanks for your help I'm quite knew at doing this, so don't bother with reset just pull old one out and use my usb by changing the order in bios and wipe tpm ? thanks
@ravenkf142 if you're doing a clean install, absolutely. You *might* run into an issue where the install doesn't see the new drive. I would recommend finding the SATA/RAID controller drivers off the new drive manufacturer website and copy those to your flash drive, so you can point to them, load the drivers and then you'll be good to proceed once the install "sees" the drive
@@AskYourComputerGuy thank you for help much appreciated, I suppose after that windows will set the drive up I will have to see, thanks again 🙂
@ravenkf142 my pleasure! Good luck, my friend 👍
I have an Aspire 5 that has 1 Gen 3 NVME drive and a Secondary SATA SSD.
My Acer Predator has 2, Gen 4, NVME drives and a third SATA slot. I can put an SSD or a Hard Drive in that slot. I don't use that drive for any programs, only storage, so I can use either one.
i'm interested in knowing about reliability and recoverability of the digital drives vs the disk?
Excellent idea! I'll add it to the drawing board 👍 💪
HDDs are still the best option for longer-term data storage and also data recovery. Typically when an SSD dies, it dies. But when an HDD dies the data is still physically there most of the time.
@@FlyboyHelosim so for a backup or video archive HDD might be a better option.... 🤔 thanks.
I'm also wondering about electrical damage, I imagine that would destroy a SSD. Just don't know what happens to the Disk with something like that.
@@Wolf-xi4if Yes I would always use an HDD for backups. They're generally more resilient and also don't require powering on as often as an SSD to maintain data integrity. You're right, SSDs are more susceptible to electrical damage whereas HDDs are more prone to magnetic damage. So as you're more likely to encounter electrical issues than magnetic ones, in theory SSDs are easier to damage during normal operation.
@FlyboyHelosim very true 👍
I'm now using a cheap nvme ssd + a wd black hdd on my laptop. Pretty solid with price per performance.
Windows OS must be installed on SSD because M$ make it's now running with more and more stuffs on startup. I choose using the hdd for photos, docs ,light games and softwares what I know exactly the loading time of them comparing with the SSD.
The HDD looks like slower but in my case it's more suitable with my internet speed at home around 30-40 Mb/s so If I download something,I don't need a faster drive which don't need caugh up with the internet speed.
And with my personal workstyle , I save many copys in a small folder in bigger and bigger folders above so when copying small stuffs like that, the cheap ssd can't keep the write speed sometimes lower than the HDD.
I try to reclone my 120gb C drive every 2 weeks just to keep it up to date incase I pick up a bug or something and my 4 1TB storage drives about each month. Reflect is the best Clone software out there but like all clone software you need to take your time and double check that you are cloning from the right drive to the right drive.
100% agreed
Cool external drive bay! (Sabent) As we see with Microsoft/Bethesda's new game Starfield, games are starting to Require SSD drives. I don't like SSD drives for the regular PC user because they are too fast. You'll have no indication if bloatware got installed that would slow the pc down so you can find and remove the unwanted bloatware. The solution to this is to make sure your PC isn't able to download and install bloatware from places like Microsoft via Updates (as well as paying attention to what you install yourself) I have resisted getting an SSD but am going to order my first next week after payday simply because I want to play Starfield and any other games that require one. I'll disable Windows Updates or use AME Wizard to remove it completely.
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SSD's are too fast? And that's a bad thing how?
@@slaydog5102 When you use a windows pc for 31 years like I have you notice over time bloat mostly from updates slows the system down. It's noticeable on mechanical hard drives and that can alert you to the problem. It's not able to be noticed on an SSD because the speed of the SSD compensates for the bloat. It's just one of those little details most people never think of.
@@DivergentDroid Exactly and excellent point. I was literally about to comment something similar. People never think about the little things. It's just "sSd FaSt AnD tHeReFoRe BeTtEr". The same can also be said for fiber-optic broadband... you've downloaded the virus before you even know something's up.
@@FlyboyHelosim Thank you sir. Great point as well. I just found out a fellow in the Starfield community has fixed the issue running Starfield on Hard Drive. There is a new mod called Disk Cache Enabler found on Nexus Mods that does the trick. It's essentially a ram drive for the game. It works because modern Ram such as DDR5 is Way faster than SSD's The tool works to help improve performance on both HDD's and SSD's.
A heads up to anyone in the UK. I just bought a 4TB 870 EVO SSD as Samsung are currently offering cashback of up to £50 on many flavours of Samsung SSD's. Wanted one for ages for space & backup & this offer made the one I bought come in at "only" £140 (c$170) which was low enough for me to take the plunge.
Offer ends 9th Octover 2023 so a few weeks left from the time of this post if anyone is looking. 👍
Good to know! 👍
Ah dammit i missed this
@@Printer_combustible Keep checking if you want one in future as it's often repeated, sometimes for more cashback.
BUT beware, the place I bought mine from (SCAN UK) increased their prices the day AFTER I bought mine by the cashback amount. I won't be using them in future!
Very sneaky & underhanded & I'm glad I caught the offer before they had time to increase the price. Luckily I knew the rough price of the SSD as I had been checking them regularly.
Oh wow - just checked SCAN UK out of interest & the price is now over £250. Wonder why it's so high now, low supply?..or is there a big cashback somewhere so they raised their prices again 🤔
Keep a check on prices is my conclusion!
@yips_way 👍
b4 I even watch this video.
YES YES YES YES YES ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT. It's the one best thing you can do to your pc to improve the speed immensely.
Yep!!! 👍
How do I determine best ssd drive for my Dell laptops?
SSD speed (they're not all the same), reviews and price 👍
TEMU sell m.2 pcie cards for those with spare slots and older machines. I ordered some to test.
Let me know how it works out 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy I will brother as soon as it get's here from China. You know how long that takes lol.
A 500 GB NVMe M.2 SSD with 5000MB/s sequential reads (which is some of the fastest available) can be as inexpensive as 29 dollars. The 1TB version 45 dollars. Crucial P3 Plus. I'm getting the 1TB version next week.
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My mechanic drive died or corrupted and cannot be booted or read, will cloning retrieve my data?
Possible. Once a drive is physically damaged, cloning is nearly impossible. But you can try, can't hurt
I bought a cheap Thinkpad off amazon back in 2016...it was a bottom of the line AMD processor 14" that some company had bought up and put SSDs in and the one I got had a 256Gb SSD and was $350 shipped. That same SSD that was in that computer is NOW in the 4th different, but identical, laptop since then. It still works great, WIN7 and all. I do NOT think that if I had started out with a regular HDD that it would have lasted this long.
I built my first computer in 1991 and have gone through more than a FEW computers and laptops and HDD's in my time.