HDD or SSD for data drives?

Box Brownie

Box Brownie

Messages
15,735
Edit My Images
No
My onboard data drives are filling up so the time has come to copy them to new ones of bigger capacity but as per the subject, should I do HDD (as used) or SSD?

FWIW I did update my C drive (OS) and E drive (programs) a while back with Crucial MX 500 SSD drives and have been happy with the speed improvements that gave me.

I would likely be getting 3 or 4 TB drives to give me a few years of storage headroom.

TIA for your user experience of this dilemma:)
 
What type on main drive does you laptop take (M2 or 2.5)? and is there place in the laptop to fit another drive? (Don't know if your C and E drives are two physical drives or one partitioned drive)
If you can fit two 1TB SSDs it is quite economical, then keep backups and little used data on external drives or NAS


I have mechanical drives for backup and things I don't access often, and SSDs for things I use often. I currently have 2 1TB SSDs and one mechanical 1TB HD in my laptop, I use 2TB SSDs to make backups from the laptop (the mechanical drive only contains things that are already backed up), I do full back ups of the laptop, then do incremental backups of those to the bigger drives. That way I always have what I am working with ready to plug into another machine, and also several backups of everything.
 
I just fitted a SSD in the M2 slot purely for photo storage to ease pressure on the HDD.
Working well and copies over rapidly to a portable SSD that I use as back up
 
Last edited:
tijuana taxi said:
I just fitted a SSD in the M2 slot purely for photo storage to ease pressure on the HDD.
Working well and copies over rapidly to a portable SSD that I use as back up
Click to expand...
The ideal would be to put the OS and programmes on the M2, it is much faster than the SATA bus and boosts overall performance quite a bit
 
Sangoma said:
The ideal would be to put the OS and programmes on the M2, it is much faster than the SATA bus and boosts overall performance quite a bit
Click to expand...
Not something i'm about to start messing with, but I totally agree with the principle.
 
tijuana taxi said:
Not something i'm about to start messing with, but I totally agree with the principle.
Click to expand...
It is usually very straightforward, takes a while (couple of hours of waiting), but not at all complex.
Worth doing if you don't have anything in the M2 slot to give more storage and speed.
 
SSD prices are dropping so fast just bite the bullet 2tb can be had for £130 its a no brainer
 
The other thing to consider is that if you don't back up, HDD often has the possibility of data recovery, but with SSD when it's gone, it's gone.
 
As the owner of a long established Computer Business I get asked this on a daily basis !

To summarise my thoughts and experience

SSD
POS - fast and getting cheaper
NEG - when they fail it is often without warning and catastrophic. Recovery is possible BUT very very expensive

HDD
POS - Cheap, often give prior warning of failure and thus recovery is much cheaper, especially if you heed the warnings
NEG - Much slower and physically bigger

Best advice IMHO

Use fast SSD for system, software and working files
+
Use larger internal HDD for storage and SSD backup
+
Use external HDD via USB for long term storage and archive (ideally several that are used on alternate updates)
 
Thanks all for the thoughts & insights.

For clarity, I am talking about a desktop system and SATA drives.

The C & E drives I refer to are separate drives.

The other HDDs are all internal storage (photos on two separate drives [externally backed too], the other drive is for the likes of Documents & installers etc [my packrat habit extends to my digital world].

At this stage I am inclined to think an SSD for one of the photo storage and an HDD for the second internal photo storage plus more HDD for the other non photo storage too.

Next sketch out what to get and source as appropriate:)

PS I use Macrium Reflect to clone and copy whole drives when needed. NB but IIRC when installed the Crucial MX500's I used the Crucial cloning software :thinking: as that was to transfer the OS.
 
In regard to HDDs

I have to date only used (though intermittently) one specialist supplier and it seems they have no stock or stock due of HDDs :thinking: I will ask them about the situation.
Edit ~ just had quick look at WD own store and they appear to stock as appropriate.....may have to buy direct. But the supplier I mention is local'ish and used collect from them which was convenient :)

The drives I have stuck with are WD Black but as I am now talking just about storage the AFAIK WD Blue should be fine.

Oh, I have just had a look at the condition of the drives the the OS Crucial (an MX250 not the MX500 ~ doh) one is showing 83% 'Drive Remaining Life' and the one with the Programs on is showing 100%

The HDDs all report 'No Drive Failures ' and 'No Drive Warnings'

NB this is using the utility HWinfo64 so only shows a subset of the S.M.A.R.T data
 
Last edited:
My PC is running only on Solid state Drives. I have a Nas system that has HDD's in and an external 2.5 HHD.

I have 3 copies of important data, 1 on SSD and 2 on HDD, in different locations, The NAS sits in a detacted garage.
 
Compuwight said:
Best advice IMHO

Use fast SSD for system, software and working files
+
Use larger internal HDD for storage and SSD backup
+
Use external HDD via USB for long term storage and archive (ideally several that are used on alternate updates)
Click to expand...

Exactly what I do, almost word for word.
 
Last edited:
I don't have internal HDDs anywhere except in my NAS which my PC backups up to every night and I have a rotating (sorry!) set of HDDs for monthly backups.
 
My new build will be SSD for system and 2 HDDs for back up, one piggy backed in the tower and the other, stand alone.
 
I use SSD's for the OS, games, applications etc. and hard drives for bulk storage and backups. Apart from it being incredibly expensive to switch the bulk storage to hard drives it's absolutely not worth it when I gain no benefit from doing so.
 
FWIW Backblaze who offer online backup facilities and publish reliability tables for hard drives have recently started giving data for SSDs too. It seems they're only a very little bit more reliable than mechanical drives, which is a surprise considering the lack of moving parts and carefully controlled environment.
 
ancient_mariner said:
FWIW Backblaze who offer online backup facilities and publish reliability tables for hard drives have recently started giving data for SSDs too. It seems they're only a very little bit more reliable than mechanical drives, which is a surprise considering the lack of moving parts and carefully controlled environment.
Click to expand...
I find the main cause of hard drive problems are shock or impact damage so when the drives are in stable systems their reliability is similar to SSDs. I'd always thought 2.5in HDDs were less reliable than 3.5in drives as at work there were far more 2.5in drive failures than the bigger versions so I was concerned when the manufacturer moved to 2.5 in drives for their compact desktops. However, these drives had similar reliability to the previous 3.5in models with the difference being previously the 2.5in drives had been only used in laptops which were on the move while the 3.5in drives were used in fixed PCs.

Similarly there was a line of PCs using 2.5in drives that seems chronically unreliable and I had to replace them a number of times. I was shocked when I found years later long after all these PCs had been binned that there was another area using five of them that had been running for over a decade without a single issue which is why I didn't know of them. The PCs were an all in one touch screen monitor design, the highly unreliable ones were mounted on a movable arm that I suspect meant they were getting carelessly banged off machinery whereas the reliable ones were in fixed positions within a cabinet for their display to be monitored.

I think it's important to understand that while SSDs are very reliable they can and do suffer from failures which can be very sudden and with no prior warning, I've seen some people recommending people to pay more for SSDs (not on here) because they'll never fail and therefore you don't need to worry about backups or losing data which of course is very wrong.
 
Just a few months late in posting but FWIW:

I have almost no room on my MBpro which is all I use for photo edititing - its stuffed full of VM's that I need for other stuff. Just store very very recent files on it and most photos are backed up / archived to portable HDD's - 2 or 4 Tb attached to a NAS. What I find is that using decent external SSD's like a Samsumg T5 2 or 4 Tb ) - I can get most of the photos I want to keep on these and I can edit them almost as quickly as if they were on the internal SSD drive ( that is just for stills ). Since I do a lot of browsing and tweaking through old files through PL6 , Affinity etc, I think this is ideal for me.

Were I using a desktop with configurable internal storage then it would be different.

Only thing with archiving to a set of HDDs is that I should remember to run them up and check them at intervals - which I don't.
 
piper said:
Only thing with archiving to a set of HDDs is that I should remember to run them up and check them at intervals - which I don't.
Click to expand...
I use a set of four HDDs for monthly backups so they each get used every four months which nicely takes care of that issue.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top