Anyone familiar with SSD technology?

[tango]

My laptop currently has a 1TB drive in it, but the way I go through space with my photography I'm thinking I need more. I've only got space for one drive, and so the Samsung 2TB SSD drive caught my eye. I've never used SSDs before, and from reviews I've read it seems like some of them are very good but sometimes you get a dud and it just dies without warning. The drive I'm looking at is about $$625 so I'd rather not drop that kind of cash if I'm then going to have issues with it. (They also do a 4TB option but that's the wrong side of $1000, so I can do without the space for now at least!)

 

[Ackbach]

Make sure the Amazon reviews you look at are from confirmed purchases. These days, a lot of companies, it seems, are inflating the Amazon reviews by hiring people to write 5-star reviews. Not a very ethical practice.

In any case, SSD is definitely the way to go for your main OS drive. Put all your main programs on it. However, it is, as you say, quite pricey for large space. If you're doing lots of photos and especially videos, I'd recommend an old-fashioned HDD for bulk volume. That is, I'd recommend a smallish (128GB to 256GB) SSD for your OS and programs, and then an external HDD for space. Then you get the best of both worlds. It's not a bad idea to separate out programs from files, anyway, since you need to backup files but not programs, generally.

 

[tango]

Make sure the Amazon reviews you look at are from confirmed purchases. These days, a lot of companies, it seems, are inflating the Amazon reviews by hiring people to write 5-star reviews. Not a very ethical practice.

In any case, SSD is definitely the way to go for your main OS drive. Put all your main programs on it. However, it is, as you say, quite pricey for large space. If you're doing lots of photos and especially videos, I'd recommend an old-fashioned HDD for bulk volume. That is, I'd recommend a smallish (128GB to 256GB) SSD for your OS and programs, and then an external HDD for space. Then you get the best of both worlds. It's not a bad idea to separate out programs from files, anyway, since you need to backup files but not programs, generally.

I've only got space for one internal drive and don't really want to have to haul an external drive around as a matter of routine.

My current internal drive (1TB) is split into an OS (~200GB) and data (~800GB). The OS partition is near capacity and I've had to shift some lesser used files from the data partition onto external hard drives because I was running out of working space.

Curiously I can't find a 2TB conventional drive that fits into a laptop and comes with reviews that doesn't make it sound like I'll spend as much time on the phone to the warranty department as doing anything useful.

As you say it can be hard to figure out the worthy reviews from the unworthy ones. It's always a shame when companies (Amazon is really bad for this) don't weed out the useless reviews. Like the ones that say the item never arrived so they gave it one star. Or the one who says something like "I bought this for my son and I'm sure he loves it" and gives five stars.

 

[Ackbach]

Yeah. Sounds like you need a 2TB SSD. Word to the wise: NEVER defragment a SSD. Turn off the Defrag service in Windows.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Most SSDs and Windows 10 do not defragment the SSD they Optimise it.

 

[tango]

Yeah. Sounds like you need a 2TB SSD. Word to the wise: NEVER defragment a SSD. Turn off the Defrag service in Windows.

Never defragment? Why is that?

 

[MoreCoffee]

Never defragment? Why is that?

An SSD does not have tracks and platters as a HDD does it only has "memory" and that cannot be fragmented in the way that the usual de-fragmentation software expects. One can optimise memory and that is how Windows 10 handles it.

 

[tango]

An SSD does not have tracks and platters as a HDD does it only has "memory" and that cannot be fragmented in the way that the usual de-fragmentation software expects. One can optimise memory and that is how Windows 10 handles it.

Ah, that's a good point. I'm using Windoze 7, as yet I don't trust Microsoft not to leave me with a dead computer if I go to 10.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Ah, that's a good point. I'm using Windoze 7, as yet I don't trust Microsoft not to leave me with a dead computer if I go to 10.

Windows 7 with its Aero interface is better looking than the flat-land looking interface of Windows 10. If you have Windows 7 Pro and use Windows Media Centre then stick with Windows 7 because Windows Media Centre is not available in Windows 10 Pro. But in defence of Windows 10's reputation (such as it is) it did not kill my PC and it runs happily on my windows tablet too (the tablet came with it installed). For me Windows 10 is stable and good - with the exception of a recent unexplained problem with ethernet - I may make a call to Microsoft support to see if they can fix it though I dread the interaction with their outsourced support centre.

 

[tango]

Windows 7 with its Aero interface is better looking than the flat-land looking interface of Windows 10. If you have Windows 7 Pro and use Windows Media Centre then stick with Windows 7 because Windows Media Centre is not available in Windows 10 Pro. But in defence of Windows 10's reputation (such as it is) it did not kill my PC and it runs happily on my windows tablet too (the tablet came with it installed). For me Windows 10 is stable and good - with the exception of a recent unexplained problem with ethernet - I may make a call to Microsoft support to see if they can fix it though I dread the interaction with their outsourced support centre.

I have Windows 7 Pro but don't use the Media Centre.

My experience of Microsoft support is such that I prefer not to repeat it. Back in my developer days we had a certain number of paid calls but by the time we got to a point that we couldn't solve something and called Microsoft it pretty much meant we'd hit a limitation (usually an undocumented limitation, sometimes one they didn't know about yet) so our call wasn't charged. The downside was that the problem didn't get solved. On one occasion, having waited 25 minutes to talk to an Excel "expert", he listened to my description of the problem, went through the verbal equivalent of scratching his head and the like, then asked if I could call him back if I managed to work out a solution. Yeah, like I'll waste another half hour listening to your canned muzak so I can do your job for you, champ.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I have Windows 7 Pro but don't use the Media Centre.

My experience of Microsoft support is such that I prefer not to repeat it. Back in my developer days we had a certain number of paid calls but by the time we got to a point that we couldn't solve something and called Microsoft it pretty much meant we'd hit a limitation (usually an undocumented limitation, sometimes one they didn't know about yet) so our call wasn't charged. The downside was that the problem didn't get solved. On one occasion, having waited 25 minutes to talk to an Excel "expert", he listened to my description of the problem, went through the verbal equivalent of scratching his head and the like, then asked if I could call him back if I managed to work out a solution. Yeah, like I'll waste another half hour listening to your canned muzak so I can do your job for you, champ.

Things at the MS telephone support centre have gone down hill since the mid 1990s. In 1994 I placed a call about a problem in MS Foxpro and the help centre was in Australia with an Australian answering the call. The problem was new to MS so I sent the diagnostic and a code sample and a couple of days later MS support telephoned me, sent a patch (which was later released world wide) and that fixed the problem. That was quite decent service. The most recent MS telephone support call I made (in 2015) was with reverting a PC from Windows 10 to Windows 7 (within a week or so of the first release of Windows 10 and because I did not like the appearance of Windows 10) resulting in failure to recognise an old 128 MB thumb drive and some other minor issue (non-recognition of my Blue Ray drive). After about 1.5 hours they escalated it to the expert and he managed to fix the minor issue but never the thumb drive issue - a later update from MS and a few restarts in the update process fixed the thumb drive problem. So I do not want to interact with MS telephone support anymore.

 

[Alexander]

I am familiar with SSD technology. SSD stands for solid-state hard drive, and you could almost compare it to a Hard Drive. The only difference is that a hard drive moves and can be easily damaged.