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How to Upgrade a Hard Disk

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seadog:
Good news Andrew. My SSD upgrade went well too. I'm now running Windows 10 and the machine is lightning fast.   :clap: :beer: :D

Pete W.:
Hi there, all,

The following may approach being  :offtopic: my only excuse is that it concerns solid state hard drives (aka 'SSHD')

I'll start by saying that my understanding of SSHDs is incomplete.  It could even be completely mistaken - in that event I welcome correction and enlightenment.

As I understand it, the way SSHDs operate means that they have an intrinsic limit on write cycles.  One consequence of that is that you shouldn't defrag (the internal housekeeping is doing something like that all the time anyway).

On my own (non-SSHD) computer, I employ, when necessary, software by Jetico called BCWipe.  This wipes by over-writing either selected files or so-called free space with multiple bit sequences.  (CCleaner does substantially the same thing.)  I recently received an email from Jetico inviting me to participate in a survey concerning wiping of SSHDs.  This was to gather data to lobby the SSHD trade association to address an alleged problem with secure wiping of files from SSHDs.  If anyone is interested in this, I'll post the URL leading to the survey.

Now of course, the modus operandi of an SSHD is quite different from that of a 'conventional' hard drive using magnetic platters.  Still, 'deleting' files, as Windows does, by changing one character in the file name to an illegal character will no more actually remove the file from an SSHD than it does from a 'conventional' drive.  So for some users the need for secure file wiping is still there for SSHDs but is more costly of drive-life if the sequential over-writing employed by BCWipe, CCleaner et alia is using up precious write cycles.  For Mac users, Apple's 'secure trash' poses the same danger.

I don't have all the answers on this topic so I'm not able to offer a conclusion - I look forward to other Modders' contributions on this topic. 

seadog:
That was my opinion too Andrew. However, it seems that earlier fears were just that, fears, and were not based on ant evidence. Here's a link to a long term test of several SSDs - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html

It seems to be a similar fear to that which followed the announcement of CDs, and that they would become unreadable, due to ink degradation, within a few years. As far as I'm aware, that too has proven to be unfounded.

awemawson:
Seadog, that post was by Pete - not me  :med:

Well I've installed two SSD's now - both Samsungs:

A/ Samsung 850 250GB EVO 2.5" SSD SATAIII 540MB/s MZ-75E250B/CN which is guaranteed against loss of read/write for 3 years

and

B/ Samsung SAM 850 Pro 256GB MZ-7KE256BW which is guaranteed against loss of read/write for 10 years

Reading the various on line reviews the consensus seemed to be that there was little difference in performance and although the second one was covered for an extra seven years, the likelihood is that the  system life would have expired by then so why bother!

In fact, it was the second type I've just installed, but only as I got a very good on line price for one.

seadog:
Apologies Andrew.

Graham  :doh: :doh: :doh:

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