New Computer with SSD - would like to clone this drive  

Bree said:

The life of an SSD is not determined by years. It is writing data that wears out an SSD, and their lifespan is measured in Terabytes written (TBW). The manufacturer's spec for my 500GB 860 EVO is 300TBW. In the 7 months I've used it I have written 5.7TB. I calculate that at that rate of use it will be 30 years before I reach the manufacturer's stated TBW.

Whilst that may be true I have some LED lights that "should"have a lifetime of around 20 years in normal use. Two have failed within 3 years of purchase.

Art

ArthurDent said:

Whilst that may be true I have some LED lights that "should"have a lifetime of around 20 years in normal use. Two have failed within 3 years of purchase.

The EVO 860 has a 5 year or specified TBW warranty (whichever is reached sooner), so if it fails at 3 years you would be covered. All the main manufacturers have similar warranties, though some are only for 3 years (and with a lower guaranteed TBW).

Well, opened up the new laptop and it basically isn't upgradeable.

The RAM (in 4 banks) is soldered to the motherboard, the PCIe NVMe SSD module has a 2242 form factor but is held in place by a metal bracket which has a tamper-proof sticker over the retaining screw. The final nail is that there is no room (nor indeed spare connector) for an additional drisk drive - be that another m.2 module or a SATA drive.

Whilst I could remove the tamper-proof sticker and put a larger SSD in, the laptop has a 3-year warranty/guarantee which would be invalidated by doing this.

I'll have to get my wife into the habit of (i) not installing any 'junk' and (ii) saving documents and files to external devices.

After installing the printer drivers for our network printers, the next job is to image the drive (again to an external device).

Art