HDD vs SSD - is upgrading your hard drive ACTUALLY worth it?
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- 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:
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👉 Sabrent HDD/SSD/NVMe m.2 dock and offline cloner:
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👉 PNY CS900 1TB SSD drive: amzn.to/3t7kAFN
👉 PNY CS900 2TB SSD drive: amzn.to/3ZmOK3U
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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.
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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.
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 👍
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
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! 😂
Very true. I installed my operating system onto an SSD. Best upgrade ever. I highly recommend it.
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As always this is great work, sir! Thank you!
Thank you so much! 👍💪
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 👍👍👍
SSD drive swaps for Laptops works especially well.
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.
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.
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 😂
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!
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.
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 💪👍❤️
Thanks Scott, picked up that docking station on Amazon in the UK for £45, fantastic piece of kit.
Good choice!
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.
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Excellent comparison video!!!
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! 👍👍👍
Enjoyed the video Scott - every day's a school day for me where computers are concerned! 😉Thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it
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 👍
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!!
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 👍
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 👍
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!
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.
👍👍👍
No it shouldn't, a lot of people still use older hardware with hard disks in them.
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 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 💪👍
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" 👍
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.
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!
yes.
not just ssd tho.
i upgraded hdd to ssd and 8 gb ram to 16 gb, my laptop felt like a completely new product.
8 gb ram days are gone, just like hdd.👍
True, but this video was specifically for hard drive comparison. I've made other videos talking about all the *other* things you can do to speed up your PC 👍
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 👍
Thanks so much for your help. Its not as intimidating as it seems
Glad to help! 👍
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.
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?
SSDs and nvmes have always been worth putting the OS on.
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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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!!! 👍
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 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.
Thank you sir!
You are welcome!
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 👍
If you buy the “PNY upgrade kit”, it comes with an external usb to sata cable and cloning software
I got a cheap “gaming” laptop in December 2018 with a 1 TB HDD. The build quality was awful and after I had to send it in twice for repair within a year, I decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. I got a new laptop with nearly identical specs but an M.2 NVMe SSD. Night and day difference. I knew that SSDs were significantly better, but I had NO idea until I actually had an SSD. Absolute night and day difference. I could never go back. Fast forward to 2024 where I now work in IT. Most of our computers have SSDs but working on the few computers we still have with HDDs is a complete nightmare. I genuinely don’t know how people deal with it.
Been doing it 30 years. You have no idea how lucky you are. You should see my boxes of dead HDDs 😂
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.
Very helpful. Thanks for the education
Glad you enjoyed it!
Nicely done. Thanks.
Thanks for watching! 💪👍
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👍
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.
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 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.
WOW!! Amazing... Thank you! :)
Fail: no mention of the difference between SATA , M.2 SATA , M.2 NVME -- m.2 form factor doesnt make it faster -- its only faster if its nvme
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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 🤷♂️
I think it would have been good to show Crystal Disk Mark tests for the drives and practical file tarnfers tests.
Not a bad idea. Maybe in a future video. Thx for the great suggestion! 👍
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!
One correction I would make is this: M.2 drives are all SSDs, Solid State Drives. They just have a different physical connection.
That fair. I was trying to just keep it simple for average folks. If I started digging too much into form factors and PCI lanes and such, it would have gotten confusing. Especially given the fact that I'd imagine it's a very small group of people who have a mechanical drive in a m.2-capable machine. It's hard to strike that balance for the viewers sometimes, so I primarily focused on mechanical vs SSD as a whole. But you're not wrong 👍
An SSD, being notably swifter, can tangibly reduce loading times, particularly on older hardware configurations.
Agreed!
When your mechanical drive goes up on you....yes. This is the future of the industry.
M.2 is faster than SATA. Older motherboards will not have a slot for M.2 SSD is the only upgrade that will make your PC perform faster
Agreed
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
Hello. I've got two questions: 1 - Is there a maximum write count for an SSD/M.2 drive? 2 - How long will the data be maintained if it is stored for example in it's original packaging for months or years?
Not sure on max write count. And the drive should be plugged in and accessed every few months at minimum
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 :)
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? 🤔🤔
Depends on how fast you want to transfer data. That's the only difference
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.
It depends on what that drive is used for, I always use a traditional (internal) spinning drive for automated backups, it's way cheaper, and doesn't need to be super fast.
Agreed. Until it dies. Always best to have a second backup for critical data
Can you clone a current Win10 drive to an SSD without hitting problems with Microsoft registration?
100% yes
I'm still using the desktop PC I bought in 2010. Last year, I finally took the plunge and cloned my rackety old 1 TB HDD to an SSD (a Samsung 870 EVO). The process went smoothly - much easier than I'd feared, and was surprisingly inexpensive. I used Samsung's free software to clone the drive. Around the same time my computer's memory started going bad, so I replaced that as well (and went from 8 to 16 GB). The difference is stunning. It's like I have a new computer (sort of). It still won't run Windows 11, of course, but you can't have everything.
I'd count that Windows 11 issue as a blessing! LOL good job 👍
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
Great sound control. What mic do you use?
Believe it or not...this one :)
amzn.to/46TqbP0
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
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 👍
Black/White thinking. Put the OS on a part of an SSD and keep your hard drive for data and backup. Good design is to separate programs from data. Put Windows in a separate partition so when Windows corrupts the file system, only the system files need to be checked. Your boot drive should be an SSD (NVMe preferred) using a GUID partition table, the UEFI partition, the Windows partition, the Windows recovery partition, and the rest as a data partition. (Or add a Linux partition and a swap partition for Linux and Windows.)
Touched on this exact point for those who only have one drive:
How to guarantee ZERO data loss if Windows crashes
ua-cam.com/video/DCQh7thkYvI/v-deo.html
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 👍
Excellent!
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.
SSD for Operating System (performance) and HDD for Data (Reliability).
Agreed. Upcoming video addressing thls exactly 👍
Brilliant information. thanks
Glad it was helpful!
Not everyone needs a docking station... Indeed, it is quite the niche product. If you are going to clone to a regular SATA SSD, and you plan to do it once, maybe twice in the next few years, then a $10 USB 3.0 to SATA dongle will also do the trick -- There's even one from SABRENT, the folks who make some of those nice docking stations in the video.
Dude, I recognize that an affiliate link for a 10-dollar gadget ain't great, but... 🤷♂😊
I have made so many people happy by just replacing their Sata HDD with a SSD in their 10 year old laptops. Boot time of 40 secs. All programs are really snappy. It's like a brand new laptop. I did a fresh install of Windows 10. SSD's are really cheap at the moment so a really cheap fix. Also I bought a Sata to USB adapter for £5 to connect old laptop HDD and copy any files needed from it. Can also use that HDD now as an external drive with the adapter.
100% agreed
SSDs are such an easy sell to customers. In addition to SSD upgrades to old computers, I often recommend installing the maximum supported RAM. It breathes new life into older computers. About the only time I don't recommend doing the upgrades is if they have a really poor CPU that will bottleneck the speed benefits of an SSD and/or more RAM.
Agreed
Thanks a lot!!
Best thing you can ever upgrade on a computer for sure.
Hi Scott;
When I switched to the local account,
it did not keep my UA-cam subs!!
Just letting you know.
That doesn't make sense. Your UA-cam subscribers are displayed through your Google account. Has zero to do with Microsoft in any way
OK. Thanks for the correction.
My first mistake, all year.
I think I did create a NEW Google
account, to go along with my local acct.@@AskYourComputerGuy
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.
I don't know about theses Macrium guys, it asks for a registration code when you try to install the free version, you have to enter an email and you receive an email from them saying follow link below to get your registration code and you go there and all it does is ask for your name an email -again- and also your phone number (!!!!) and says "the team" will get back to you but nobody has gotten back to me yet and i still do not have a registration code and installation -and the rest of the pc- is hanging in mid air, -until i scratch it.
If you download from Macrium, your downloading the new version. Follow the link I the description. No code needed, just download and install 👍
OK i figured it out, when you run the install for the free version there is an option which is selected by default for registering the program. If you deselect this option -click the radio button- and continue it gets installed without any problem.
Only Issue I have with this is that here in Australia, wholesalers are charging $90 for a PNY 1Tb SSD so by the time it gets to retail your looking around $120 . Why are prices in the USA so cheap ???
Ouch. Maybe adjustment for distance to ship?
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
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.
👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy???
Run TRON after you upgrade from that old HDD to that snappy new SSD, that program, easy to find and download, debloats the OS of unnecessary stuff and junk.
Good info
Thank you! 👍
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
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…
Your power supply can handle it. It uses maybe a tiny bit less than an HDD
Now what you really want to test is PCIE M.2 vs your standard Sata ssd as the m.2 drive you tested was still working off the sata interface chip set. Pcie is the next step in the evolution. M.2 is just a form factor man
The reason I said above man is because with Pcie gen 3 or above boot times will be about 30 seconds or so and the initial app open time will be instant
Um, his M.2 SSD was NVMe and therefore PCIe.
Fair argument. Didn't want to get too far into the weeds, I try to keep it simple for simple people. If people see a big enough difference for them to upgrade, then they can decide which drive type is best for them. Anything beyond that would have been too technical for the intent of the video. It was "hey you, novice...here's A vs B vs C, in case you didn't know there was options" 💪
I love your explanation of a mechanical drive to a digital drive. Mechanical drives are like record players but who else knows what a record player is these days, haha. 😄
💪
Mechanical drives store information digitally. Data can be either analog or digital and both HDDs and SSDs store the information digitally. The presenter is sort of in error in how he presents this. It's basically like saying that a racing motorbike is faster because it burns gasoline and that a 4 wheel car is slower because its much larger. (How is a motorbike faster because it burns gasoline when the 4 wheel car also burns gasoline?)
@butmunchass the presenter was trying to explain SSD vs HDD. To a novice, it's easier to understand "all-digital vs mechanical" then "technically a mechanical drive stores data digitally also, by writing a series of 1's and 0's to a polycarbonate drive spindle spinning at a minimum of 5400 rpm". I'm appealing to a novice user here. Average people understand mechanical vs digital. They don't care about the technical specs, unless I'm specifically comparing technical specs for the purpose of a video. Sorry the verbiage offended you.
I understand your point but I'd suggest something such as "mechanical vs electronic" or "mechanical vs non-moving parts". The problem is that the word "digital" is so often misused in this respect that people end up going around parroting what they heard and it becomes a situation where other people don't really know what they are talking about. For example I have family members that have asked me to "download" their pictures from a memory card to the system drive and this becomes silly.@@AskYourComputerGuy
@butmunchass verbiage is always a tough issue when dealing with novices. I still have people ask me to check out their "modem" (tower LOL). I try to simply as much as I can on my channel because my audience is *those* people. They don't care so much about the symantecs...they just want to understand the basic differences. You're not wrong, just don't want to overwhelm the "basic folks". That's what I do 💪
Lesson learned.
My new build summer of 22 (since 2003!) Used a NMVe Crucial 500g for OS.
My data was a Crucial 2T MX with a 2T WD Black used for backing up OS.
The DATA SSD on a normal start up just went RAW. Four data recovery apps and a real tech and 9 days later we learned the SSD data looks like it was all over written with zeros.
Shipped to Crucial for warranty, no longer trust this one.
What to do?
Now have 2ea WD 4T Black for data back up and the new Crucial 2T when it comes in will be used for OS back up.
Lost 1.5 years of medical data and projects for trusting a SSD and just going through the normal shutdown and start up. Yes, PC is powered via UPS.
Stuff happens. HHD mechanics are not as sensitive as the SSD to minute grid spikes even a UPS has about a 10 cycle (hertz) delay. Enough to crater a SSD? Don't know.
Just sharing experience and hope it helps others. WD Black i read was good for over a decade and the Red for about five years. Bought the only two Black WD 4T Best Buy had.
Now to learn how to set them up as a RAID.
If this helps, I've got 3 1.5TB WD Blacks that I paid WAY too much for. 15 years ago. Still cranking away. Money well spent IMO 👍
@@AskYourComputerGuy TY...!
@sheepdog3828 you're welcome! ❤️
I use 250GB SSD for Windows operating system software for Quick Boot Times, and a 4TB western Digital HDD external USB drive for Saving everything else.
Machine is Hp Z620 with 196GB Ram
X2 intel Processors used for CAD design software.
Nice! 💪
@@AskYourComputerGuy its not bad for an old workhorse I must admit, I purchased it second hand. It was an old server Machine Before.
I think that's why it has so much Ram on Board.