Couple of HDD questions for upgrade

renswic

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Nov 28, 2004
Messages
5,972
Looking to upgrade my laptops 2.5 drive with an at least 2tb HDD. It's not my windows install drive(m.2 has that privlige). I have a general clue on how to clone the current hard drive when I get a bigger one.

But doing basic price checking between a normal spinning 2.5 drive and like a small laptop size external hard drive there's a bit of a price difference favoring an external drive. Is there any real difference outside of warranty issues or could I buy an external drive get it and use that hard drive in my laptop?
 
Looking to upgrade my laptops 2.5 drive with an at least 2tb HDD. It's not my windows install drive(m.2 has that privlige). I have a general clue on how to clone the current hard drive when I get a bigger one.

But doing basic price checking between a normal spinning 2.5 drive and like a small laptop size external hard drive there's a bit of a price difference favoring an external drive. Is there any real difference outside of warranty issues or could I buy an external drive get it and use that hard drive in my laptop?
speed and quality(some times). get a bare internal drive and suck up the $10 difference.
 
It used to be that an external HDD was just a HDD in an external enclosure but that isn't always the case nowadays. Some now have custom circuits and are USB only, so beware.

As for cloning, I've had good luck recently with Macrium Reflect. It's free just to clone, and works well. You can resize the partitions when configuring which drive to clone to. However, do you have another SATA port where you can plug in both at the same time to clone?
 
speed and quality(some times). get a bare internal drive and suck up the $10 difference.
Kk ty
It used to be that an external HDD was just a HDD in an external enclosure but that isn't always the case nowadays. Some now have custom circuits and are USB only, so beware.

As for cloning, I've had good luck recently with Macrium Reflect. It's free just to clone, and works well. You can resize the partitions when configuring which drive to clone to. However, do you have another SATA port where you can plug in both at the same time to clone?
Kk thank you for the heads up.

No I'd be using a external usb 3.0 HDD enclosure for the cloning process.

last time I got new computer parts was so let 939 days. Newegg still the best or is there better places? Only have besybuy and office depot in my area so B&M locations are not.kich of an option
 
Newegg is not bad, the only thing I don't like about them is their ancient return policy with 15% re-stocking fee. Just not acceptable in today's day and age where Amazon is same price most of the time. I haven't returned anything in a while so don't know whether they still enforce it.
MicroCenter is one of my favorites. BB and OfficeDepot are hit or miss as they don't really specialize that much in PC hardware.
 
Newegg is not bad, the only thing I don't like about them is their ancient return policy with 15% re-stocking fee. Just not acceptable in today's day and age where Amazon is same price most of the time. I haven't returned anything in a while so don't know whether they still enforce it.
MicroCenter is one of my favorites. BB and OfficeDepot are hit or miss as they don't really specialize that much in PC hardware.
Unfortunately the nearest Micro Center to me is over 8 hours away. Best brands to go with? It's mainly used for temp media storage and game installs.
 
Newegg is not bad, the only thing I don't like about them is their ancient return policy with 15% re-stocking fee. Just not acceptable in today's day and age where Amazon is same price most of the time. I haven't returned anything in a while so don't know whether they still enforce it.
I wouldn't buy a spinning hard drive from Amazon if they were the only people selling them. They don't pack worth a damn, and that doesn't do good things to hard drives.
 
A 2TB hard disk is ~$80, a 2TB SSD is ~$200. Get the SSD, it's worth it for the speed and reliability.

Note that larger hard drives won't fit in your laptop unless it's ancient or unusual...they're all 15mm thick, versus 7mm (9.5mm used to be common but that has disappeared from the market).
 
I wouldn't buy a spinning hard drive from Amazon if they were the only people selling them. They don't pack worth a damn, and that doesn't do good things to hard drives.

True. I'm still shopping around so hopefully something pops up elsewhere too.

A 2TB hard disk is ~$80, a 2TB SSD is ~$200. Get the SSD, it's worth it for the speed and reliability.

Note that larger hard drives won't fit in your laptop unless it's ancient or unusual...they're all 15mm thick, versus 7mm (9.5mm used to be common but that has disappeared from the market).

Last time I looked into an SSD replacement it was suggested to avoid as they have a limit or shelf life on how many times they can be accessed or have data taken on and off.

It's a newer laptop of 2019 or 20 model if it's a normal PS4(that's what is in it now) size 2.5 drive.

Edit. I guess I should make sure that using an external enclosure will work for cloning the hard drive correct
 
I wouldn't buy a spinning hard drive from Amazon if they were the only people selling them. They don't pack worth a damn, and that doesn't do good things to hard drives.
That's true, lol. I'm not a fan of Amazon, hardly buy any electronics there. But, they do have the better cust service out there.
I still mostly buy at Newegg, but I actually try to buy from the Newegg's eBay store - that way I get the Newegg products and eBay return policy. Again, I hardly ever return stuff, but it's good for the piece of mind.

Unfortunately the nearest Micro Center to me is over 8 hours away. Best brands to go with? It's mainly used for temp media storage and game installs.
Honestly, I can't recall the last time I bought a dinosaur of a mechanical HDD. There's been a lot of consolidation in that industry, I think WD bought HGST (Hitachi) and Maxtor got absorbed somewhere along the lines. I think it's down to 2 major players these days. Check some reviews.
 
Last time I looked into an SSD replacement it was suggested to avoid as they have a limit or shelf life on how many times they can be accessed or have data taken on and off.

It's a newer laptop of 2019 or 20 model if it's a normal PS4(that's what is in it now) size 2.5 drive.

Edit. I guess I should make sure that using an external enclosure will work for cloning the hard drive correct
Nah, unless you're a datacenter and write tens of GBs per day, you will not reach that limit in your lifetime. I've had SSDs as my system drives in for 5 years and the most damage I managed to do was to bring down the SSD to 92% life left. I've also bought some used SSDs with 25,000+ hours on them and put another 10-15k hours on them with no issue.

I have had SSD's die, but that was long time ago on some early samples - we're talking 60gb and 120gb SSDs, back when that's all you could get for $100.
 
i ran 2 60gb ocz vertex 3 in raid 0 for years, prob 6-7, they still test 95%+
 
Hmm kk. Maybe I'll drop by the FS section and see what's there for ssd. Have about $100 limit is like to stick with
 
Found a HDD to get. Went with a Samsung 870 qvo 2tb ssd. Not of a big fan of the price behind it. But with what you guys are saying about life span and the reviews that I read and watched have been really good on it and with how mobile my laptop is I'd rather the security of hard drives with no moving parts.

The shocking part of this is Best buy actually had it cheaper than Amazon and Newegg not my much but I can pick it up after work today instead of waiting a few days to get it.
 
Found a HDD to get. Went with a Samsung 870 qvo 2tb ssd. Not of a big fan of the price behind it. But with what you guys are saying about life span and the reviews that I read and watched have been really good on it and with how mobile my laptop is I'd rather the security of hard drives with no moving parts.

The shocking part of this is Best buy actually had it cheaper than Amazon and Newegg not my much but I can pick it up after work today instead of waiting a few days to get it.
good call.
 
It used to be that an external HDD was just a HDD in an external enclosure but that isn't always the case nowadays. Some now have custom circuits and are USB only, so beware.

As for cloning, I've had good luck recently with Macrium Reflect. It's free just to clone, and works well. You can resize the partitions when configuring which drive to clone to. However, do you have another SATA port where you can plug in both at the same time to clone?
Downloaded Macrium Reflect program and I think is running correctly. But at least it says it's cloning to the SSD that's in my external enclosure at the moment. Just not sure if it's going to clone it and leave the rest of the drive open for added storage or if I set that part up wrong or not I will find out in 44%
 
Downloaded Macrium Reflect program and I think is running correctly. But at least it says it's cloning to the SSD that's in my external enclosure at the moment. Just not sure if it's going to clone it and leave the rest of the drive open for added storage or if I set that part up wrong or not I will find out in 44%
it reflect didnt auto-adjust it, you should be able to use disk management to extend it.
 
Nice. It's been a while sinse I got a LMGTFY link dropped on me.

80% done. So far seems to be going well. On a lesser note it's really odd not to hear the hard drive spinning when it's sitting less than 8 inches from my ear at the moment.
Yea, bud, you asked for it. No offense.
Now you need to build yourself a retro rig with a clicky AF HDD to get your fix when you're feeling nostalgic. It's becoming a real thing these days.
 
Yea, bud, you asked for it. No offense.
Now you need to build yourself a retro rig with a clicky AF HDD to get your fix when you're feeling nostalgic. It's becoming a real thing these days.

I've never actually had to clone a hard drive before. It's always just been adding them on for additional storage. But in the case of this laptop my game launcher is like steam and epic and whatnot are installed on the m.2 and the games are installed on the 2.5 drive. So I'm not sure if a direct copy paste to the new drive will work and not cause problems. Cloning from what I read shouldn't cause problems
 
So I'm not sure if a direct copy paste to the new drive will work and not cause problems. Cloning from what I read shouldn't cause problems
ive drag 'n dropped my game installs from a 500GB HDD to a 500GB SSD and then to a 1TB SSD without a prob. either way works(should).
 
FIn:
161191086_135458591824927_7450298851190758005_n.jpg

Took just over 2 hours to clone. After a few mins of head scratching as to why none of my games were working via desktop short cut. I changed the drive letter from 'F' as seen to 'E' as it was before and everything works great. On my laptop the 2.5 drive is under where your wrist sits on the right hand side. Its odd an caused a second of worry when I couldn't feel the drive spin up or even hear anything if the fan isn't spinning

Performance wise. Not sure if its because its not only a new product but also my first ever SSD. But folders seem to open a lot faster. Even my pic heavy switch and skyrim screenshot folders open and load the thumbnails almost instantly. Between tomorrow night and friday night I'll get games I deleted for space reinstalled and should even still have roughly 60-75GBs of space for more.

Thanks for the help guys, I don't wonder away from genmay very often. But you guys made it worth it.
Al least the drive is all matchy matchy, also hardware porn:
160869440_163018562230837_6238842636282029750_n.jpg

*pic was taken before can of air attacked that fan
 
Back
Top