Recomendation for a 250GB - 300GB drive for always on PC

[metropole]

I believe that the main drive (OS/programs) in a Media Center PC is about to fail. There is a second drive for recordings.
I would like to take the opportunity to upgrade to SSD. My current drive is 300GB. Frankly, 250GB probably would be enough.

What kind of brands/product lines are viewed to be most reliable and have longevity? Quality is more important to me than absolute speed as the SSD goes into an older setup.

 

[ToddW2]

edit - missed that you had a 2nd drive for recording, thought the SSD was for that

 

[izx]

I believe that the main drive (OS/programs) in a Media Center PC is about to fail. There is a second drive for recordings.

OK, so you want to replace the MAIN drive with a high quality 250GB SSD? Get the Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB and call it a day.

 

[doublejack]

Samsung 850 EVO is a good choice. Alternatives are the MX Crucial drives or anything Intel. My preference is Intel but they are not cheap.

 

[Zepher]

I have a pair of Crucial 128 & 256GB M4 drives that are on 24/7 that are running strong, so I would go with crucial.

 

[izx]

Samsung 850 EVO is a good choice. Alternatives are the MX Crucial drives or anything Intel. My preference is Intel but they are not cheap.

Sadly, Intel seems to have gotten out of the consumer SATA SSD market.

Amazon is currently selling the Crucial BX100 256GB (MLC) for $70 (DO NOT get the BX200 series).

 

[mrluckypants96]

Definitely a small SSD. With all the recent upgrades to SSD's, they end up being more reliable than even some of the best HDD's.

I'd recommend a Samsung EVO, great balance of performance and cost.

 

[izx]

With all the recent upgrades to SSD's, they end up being more reliable than even some of the best HDD's.

The "look Ma! no moving parts!" promise of reliability which only Intel SSDs had at the dawn of the consumer SSD era has finally trickled down to all SSDs made by flash manufacturers themselves. The only way for an SSD to die should be if you literally wear it out by writing too much. Too many of the early SSDs died prematurely because of poor controllers or poor manufacturing practices (looking at you, OCZ!).

With Intel gone from the consumer market, Samsung is the new reliability champ. Even the new Toshiba-made "OCZ"s are pretty good -- at similar prices, I'd take them over SSDs from third parties (who make neither the controller nor the flash).

 

[SomeGuy133]

EVO, PRO, Extreme Pro, MX200, intel, or any server SSD. I might be missing a brand/model or two but thats most of them. If performance is not an issue and for your use case that appears to be the case go with whatever is cheapest so EVO/MX200.


as always still back up once in awhile.

 

[metropole]

Thanks all. I will pickup the Samsung EVO.

I noticed that there tend to be many adapter brackets sold with built in fans. I realize, there were always enthusiasts who cooled HD's. I have to assume this is mostly overkill?

Also, what is the easiest way to clone a drive these days? Something to boot on a USB stick?

 

[Stereodude]

I noticed that there tend to be many adapter brackets sold with built in fans. I realize, there were always enthusiasts who cooled HD's. I have to assume this is mostly overkill?

Also, what is the easiest way to clone a drive these days? Something to boot on a USB stick?

Keeping your HDDs cool isn't a bad idea. The fan pointing at the drive is probably unnecessary with a SSD. Many (most?) have thermal sensors in them and will report their temp. If it's getting hot move it somewhere it'll get some airflow.

Personally, I like Clonezilla myself. It's free / open source. You make a liveCD/USB and boot from it. Note that it can't clone to a smaller drive if the partitions on the source drive are larger than the target drive, say a 300GB of partitions going to a 250GB drive (even if the source drive is only 50% used). So you would have to resize the partition on the source drive so the disk usage doesn't exceed the size of the target drive. Some other programs can handle this situation better. If the drive is failing a partition resize may not be a good idea since it's more wear and tear.

 

[mrluckypants96]

Thanks all. I will pickup the Samsung EVO.

I noticed that there tend to be many adapter brackets sold with built in fans. I realize, there were always enthusiasts who cooled HD's. I have to assume this is mostly overkill?

Also, what is the easiest way to clone a drive these days? Something to boot on a USB stick?

Yeah, older HDDs put out a lot more heat than newer ones, and SSD's put out a small fraction of that. My SSD's all stay cool to the touch, even with practically no airflow.

I use Macrium Reflect (Free version here: Macrium Reflect Free) for cloning my drives. It's pretty intuitive to use and has cloned several of my drives without issue.

 

[SomeGuy133]

Thanks all. I will pickup the Samsung EVO.

I noticed that there tend to be many adapter brackets sold with built in fans. I realize, there were always enthusiasts who cooled HD's. I have to assume this is mostly overkill?

Also, what is the easiest way to clone a drive these days? Something to boot on a USB stick?

only select SSDs need to have active cooling and those are obvious...you'll know if your buying one. Laptops never have active cooling on HDD and those are almost always fine and SSDs use even less energy...unless your buying something unique. (512GB 950 PRO, Kingston Hyperx Predator and so on) and even then they must be under crazy loads.

 

[izx]

I noticed that there tend to be many adapter brackets sold with built in fans.

Most single-bay 5.25" adapters with tiny fans aren't worth it -- from first-hand experience, the same HD with the same workload stays cooler in a fanless open-frame adapter than a fancy closed-frame adapter with speed control, LCD, etc.

Multi-bay 5.25" adapters usually have decent-sized fans (read: 80mm or larger). A pull-fan-at-the-back enclosure cools better than a push-fan-at-the-front enclosure. The former may be noisier, but you can usually mod it or change out the fan.

Also, what is the easiest way to clone a drive these days? Something to boot on a USB stick?

I second Clonezilla. IIRC, it also cloned the NT signature (how Windows uniquely identifies disks) -- it might have an option to clone or generate a new one these days. If you plug in two boot disks (original and clone) with the same NT signature, Windows will get very confused.

 

[metropole]

Meanwhile, I got the Samsung disc and installed Macrium Reflect.
Upon startup of Reflect I get a dialog offering to clone my drive, which I did. However, there was an error 13 at the end.

Turns out that this is caused by bad clusters. chkdsk did not find any. the WDC tool did. However, the bad news is that the WDC tool can't fix them.

Is there another option to create a clone that ignores bad clusters?

 

[izx]

Run chkdsk /r /f X: (whatever drive) and it will find and repair any bad clusters.

 

[metropole]

Run chkdsk /r /f X: (whatever drive) and it will find and repair any bad clusters.

This is what I did. It didn't seem it found any issues needing repair. I am pretty sure I have some bad clusters from the past that got already marked as such.
Not sure what bad clusters the WDC tool found. Maybe just these previous ones?
I didn't think having bad clusters is all that bad as long as those are marked as such and no longer used.
Not sure what causes Macrium to generate error 13.