SSD should I change from standard HDD?

I keep getting emails from ebuyer advertising ssd drives.
I have been pondering buying one for a while to replace the hdd in my pc.

not sure if they are worth the money or not?
ebuyer have an offer on a wd blue 250gb for £78 but I need convincing.
https://www.ebuyer.com/801067-wd-blu...sd-wds250g2b0a

£78 if it’s not a great improvement is a lot of cash to just throw away on a drive.
My system is fairly quick as it’s only 6 months old.
not sure on specs as never looked tbh as it just does what I need it to.

I know now it has 16gb ram and 1tb hdd but that’s it lol
The latest windows update slowed me down a bit but it boots from off to running in around 40 seconds or so.

So is it worth it?

They make a massive difference imho.
Not just on loading windows but with loading and operating anything on the SSD.

You will really be surprised, it felt like a massive upgrade the first time I used one.

One use scenario from a friend photographer I upgraded. When he edits his RAW files in photoshop, every time he scrolled through his images, there was a few second delay is his old HDD loaded the 30MB+ image which over his day of editing added up to a LOT of time and frustration. SSD upgrade = instant load. No delay at all for him.

Lots of pluses tbh. At first I was wary about data loss but with modern memory chips that chances are slim... Do backups :-)

Just buy it and then you will think WTF have I been using all these years. Best thing I ever did was get an SSD. got it of here of a member

boots up in about 20 seconds after bios screen has gone

since i bit the bullet on my gaming pc, managed to get 1 512 Adata for around £95 last October, i have now fitted SSD in the wifes and both kids laptops & my sons gaming rig, best thing since sliced bread lol

It's kind of like saying "I have been driving a Fiat Punto for the last 10 years, I could afford to get an Audio RS8 but will I notice the difference?"

:wink2:

IMHO SSD is the best performance upgrade for any PC.

Even old P4's show massive improvements when they are not waiting for rotating rust.

Once you have moved to an SSD there will be no going back. From loads times, to multitasking to windows update. SSD drives is all we run here, from the Main PC , to the 2 kids gaming pc's. HDD are only good for storage imo & when the price's drop of the SSD's the HDD days are numbered.
I found an old early 32gb one last year in the back of a draw & tested it against the HDD in my daughters old laptop.
WIn7 boot time
HDD = 3min 50 --- SSD 19 seconds

Word 2007
HDD 7 seconds SSD 2 seconds

An SSD imo, is one of the best upgrades you can do,

Spoiler:

Attachment 30872

If when you get
make sure you can optimize your bios with trim settings for the SSD and get SSDlife to keep an eye on things

google it

All of above and just to add, significant noise reduction, well no noise obviosly ! and no heat and finally the space, next to none, it's a no brainer !!!

Regards

Ok I went for the WD blue 250gb from Amazon for £74.
wont be here until Tuesday so now I need help on how to clone the hdd to the ssd.

easeus.com do a free tool for this from memory. If its not free I am sure you know where to look.

Pretty sure that is the one I used without any issues.

Edit: https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html

So an overwhelming result then.
I'm still surprised that folks are still using HDD's for their OS. The difference really is night and day.

Not by choice it’s what came installed in the pc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Teajunkie

Not by choice it’s what came installed in the pc.

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Yeah I am guessing there are hundreds of thousands of HDD's in warehouses as pretty much 90% of new PC's still have HDD's.

If it's not too much effort I would backup your stuff and then clean install to the SSD for the best improvement. You can always image your drive if you're worried about missing anything but as you are swapping the drive can always leave your HDD "as-is" for future reference.

It was a complete system ready to go from the box so doesnt have the os on a cd :(

As it's a legit os im happy to see what difference it makes just cloning though.

What OS is it? You can usually just download a clean media, install then type in your product key to activate so it's legit still. If you don't have a product key then you probably have SLIC tables in the BIOS so I can help you activate that (legitimately) too.

just came across this 480gb 89.99
https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/...931_digidip+UK

Right need help :(

pulling my my hair out now.
got the ssd went to install it and there’s only two Sata ports one for hdd and one for cd.
unplugged the cd drive to find there’s only one power connector as the CD drive has a two pin plug.

so I got an old external dvd writer and a molex to sata power connector and crimped them to get power to the drive.
Drive is seen in windows now but I can’t get the fucking thing to clone.

Easeus completes and i click finish but then it won’t boot I just get the error insert system disk or something.
I have tried clone disk and tried system clone but system clone says not enough space on destination.

So I tried the tool that’s on wd site Acronis I think it’s called.
it goes through the motions Of cloning but then says to continue the system needs to restart.

The pc reboots and then nothing acronis doesnt load back up and if I repeat the procedure it just asks to restart again.
i can’t avoid restarting otherwise it cancels itself.

Im really getting to the point of sending this ssd back. :(

I dont have a product key on the machine either so can’t do a fresh install.
the main drive is 2tb and the ssd is 250gb.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Teajunkie

Right need help :(

pulling my my hair out now.
got the ssd went to install it and there’s only two Sata ports one for hdd and one for cd.
unplugged the cd drive to find there’s only one power connector as the CD drive has a two pin plug.

so I got an old external dvd writer and a molex to sata power connector and crimped them to get power to the drive.
Drive is seen in windows now but I can’t get the fucking thing to clone.

Easeus completes and i click finish but then it won’t boot I just get the error insert system disk or something.
I have tried clone disk and tried system clone but system clone says not enough space on destination.

So I tried the tool that’s on wd site Acronis I think it’s called.
it goes through the motions Of cloning but then says to continue the system needs to restart.

The pc reboots and then nothing acronis doesnt load back up and if I repeat the procedure it just asks to restart again.
i can’t avoid restarting otherwise it cancels itself.

Im really getting to the point of sending this ssd back. :(

I dont have a product key on the machine either so can’t do a fresh install.
the main drive is 2tb and the ssd is 250gb.

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Sounds like it's trying to copy the entire drive rather than just the used space or you are using more than the capacity of the SSD on the current drive. I've had issues cloning HDD to SSD before with tools like that and with sector alignment being a consideration didn't use clonezilla like I would if it were HDD to HDD.

What OS is it? Did the OS come pre-installed? I imagine you have a SLIC activation which is easy to reactivate after a clean install.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by evilsatan

Sounds like it's trying to copy the entire drive rather than just the used space or you are using more than the capacity of the SSD on the current drive. I've had issues cloning HDD to SSD before with tools like that and with sector alignment being a consideration didn't use clonezilla like I would if it were HDD to HDD.

What OS is it? Did the OS come pre-installed? I imagine you have a SLIC activation which is easy to reactivate after a clean install.

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Win 10
yes pre installed

wtf Is a slic activation? Lol

There are tools that can read the activation code from your existing installation and then you can easily reinstall.

I would take Evilsatan up on his offer as tbh a fresh installation is ALWAYS best and comes with speed improvements just for doing that. I always regret cloning an OS for someone.

I will take him up on his offer if I knew what it was :D
just need to know what I have to do.

Windows10 is a digital certificate so you just install clean and it activates itself, easiest of the lot and you can download the installation media direct from Microsoft:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/soft...d/windows10ISO

Use the tool to create a USB boot media or ISO to burn to a DVD (think it needs to be a dual layer so USB is better), disconnect the HDD, connect the SSD, boot to the install media and install the same version you have now (its important to install home version if that's what you are on already for it to activate).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Teajunkie

I will take him up on his offer if I knew what it was :D
just need to know what I have to do.

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Just get whatever version of Windows 10 downloaded that is on your PC now and install it. MS have the downloads on their website with a tool to make USB etc
Then Mr Satan can help you sort your legit key or I am happy to help in "alternative" ways.

Get whatever keys out of your legit Windows first if possible.

Thanks lads will give this a bash tomorrow. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mickey

Just buy it and then you will think WTF have I been using all these years. Best thing I ever did was get an SSD.

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This.

Ok good news.

Ssd installed using link for windows thanks evil ;)
activated itself so bonus and hassle free.

now I connected the original drive up to a usb hdd caddy to copy across the files from my documents and folders.
as it turns out the drives formatted in gpt so I can’t actually access the files now.

So so if there’s an easy way to copy my stuff please help as I’m using a easeus recovery tool to get the data but it’s going to take 10 hours just to search the drive and god knows if it’s even going to find what I need?

you may be able to boot from the HDD whilst in the caddy and then copy to the SSD if it's available or copy to a USB stick to transfer to the SSD. Unless you have a NAS etc?

As above is the easiest way. Boot from your old HDD & copy to the SSD. GPT is a massive pain in the arse.

When I got a new SSD I backed up my c drive onto another drive I had on my system
then I made a boot usb by using Acronis True Image. onto a spare usb stick

I then turned off the pc, removed the old drive, put in the SSD, booted from the new usb bootdisk and set Acronis to restore the drive, it complained a bit saying it was too big etc etc but I just told it to get on with it

remember when you backup your original drive to copy also all them lil extra partitions windows creates for no bloody reason. it should then reboot from the SSD, if you get a INT or whatever fault then you haven't copied all the partition boot info when you did the original backup, also make sure you use sector copy as you want a like for like dump onto you new SSD

this is also a good read
https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to...ws-10-3663261/

How to clone a hard drive using software

The cheapest way to copy the contents of a hard drive to another is to use software.
There are a couple of free options, but you’ll quickly discover that many ‘free’ cloners are limited in some way and won’t do what you need unless you pay for the full version.
If you want the most flexibility and an interface that’s easy to use, you’ll probably want to spend some money.
It’s worth knowing that you can buy some SSDs as ‘upgrade kits’ which come with more than just the bare drive. Some include a USB-to-SATA cable and software so you can clone your laptop’s disk to the SSD without having to take the old disk out and find a PC that will let you attach both drives.
But if you do need to find yourself some cloning software, here are some free options to investigate:
Free hard drive cloning software

• EaseUS Todo Backup Free 10.6
• Macrium Reflect Free v7
• Clonezilla

Paid-for hard drive cloning software

Paragon is one of the best-known names in cloning software and has two packages which cater for different scenarios.
One is Drive Copy 15 Professional. It costs a very reasonable £26.99 (US$39.95) and supports Windows 10.
It does everything you would expect, including cloning to a smaller-capacity disk by excluding files if there's not enough space. It even supports cloning to virtual machines so you can work with older apps which aren’t supported in Windows 10.

Personally, I'd have installed fresh rather than cloning. The speed Windows installs to the new SSD is minutes and transfering anything require from the HDD over would be blisteringly quick anyway.

I think, cloning it is giving you more headaches than it's worth.

Can you not just initialise the disk in Disk Manager? I forget it's been so long, but surely Windows can read a drive that MBR or GPT after its online?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

I did do a fresh install.

i can’t initialise the disk as storage manager only sees the disk but doesn’t allow any changes not even a format!
i will try booting to it from usb but I’m not holding out hope.

Theres not not much I need to copy, it’s only around 500mb and I was going to copy that from the drive then format it
ill let you know how it goes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Teajunkie

I did do a fresh install.

i can’t initialise the disk as storage manager only sees the disk but doesn’t allow any changes not even a format!
i will try booting to it from usb but I’m not holding out hope.

Theres not not much I need to copy, it’s only around 500mb and I was going to copy that from the drive then format it
ill let you know how it goes.

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If it wont let you format just open a command prompt as admin, then use diskpart to remove partitions etc job done

diskpart
then type help for commands as I forget exact commands
basically get it to list the disks attached (it numbers them)
then select disk 'x'
then remove partitions
create new if you want or you can just do that in windows disk manager

I’d be careful adjusting any partitions before you’ve grabbed your data. At worst you should be able to put your HDD back in the machine, boot it up and copy your data to a USB stick then put the SSD back in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mickey

Paid-for hard drive cloning software

Paragon is one of the best-known names in cloning software and has two packages which cater for different scenarios.
One is Drive Copy 15 Professional. It costs a very reasonable £26.99 (US$39.95) and supports Windows 10.
It does everything you would expect, including cloning to a smaller-capacity disk by excluding files if there's not enough space. It even supports cloning to virtual machines so you can work with older apps which aren’t supported in Windows 10.

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Paragon is the way and if you look in those dodgy places you can find one of those lifetime trial additions ;-)

Also make sure you do the "winsat disk" command if you are cloning so windows knows it is now installed on a SSD rather than a HDD so it manages the disk better.

It doesn’t boot fro usb and reading other sites the only way to read it is to connect it back into the machine and grab the data.
so I guess that’s what I’m going to have to do later today.

What a pain in the arse this has been.
Well im going to grab what I want and format the drive to ntfs and stick it in the server.
its only a 2tb drive but I can move some of those old tv series onto it and make room for some new stuff.

Look on the bright side, the time lost pissing about will soon me recovered in savings in the future!!

Occasionally these routine jobs throw some spanner’s in the works, It’s about how you adapt to them and that’s what DF is for ;)