Internal 2.5" SATA Solid State Hard Drives - appreciate Help/Guidance

Internal 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Hard Drives - appreciate some help & guidance

Hi

I'm thinking of swapping the 2.5 inch SATA HD that holds Windows 7,
on my nine year old ASUS N73SV notebook, that has two hard drive bays,
for a 2.5 inch SATA SSD
This SATA SSD would be for Windows 10 and backups.
The other bay HAS TO BE: WD 500GB Black - for storage.
Why 500GB ?
Because I wanted the Storage/Backup hard drive TO BE AT LEAST 2TB - but thatisn't possible anymore, because if you want to play safe you can ONLY USE Western Digital drives that are 500 GB and less because these drives are using
PMR, also known as conventional magnetic recording (CMR), that works by aligning
the poles of the magnetic elements, which represent bits of data, perpendicularly to
the surface of the disk. Magnetic tracks are written side-by-side, without overlapping.
(copied that from elsewhere!)
AND NOT SMR (shingled magnetic recording) that are really bad news.
I got caught out this year, when around January I brought two Blue and two Black - ALL 2TB


Just a few Questions - so I don't cock up!
1)..... Do I have to prepare a 2.5" SATA SSD to use as a Boot Drive/Win 10?
2) . Can you partition a SATA SSD?
.. . If not, does Computer Management play a role in any way?
3) .. Is the File System still NTFS?
4) . I've also read that when the SSD starts to fill up, they become really slow - is this what happens?
Also that when you delete anything it doesn't free up any space, until a certain amount is free 'per sector'

Is that correct?
5) Could you confirm that I would need at least 32 GB
to install Windows 10 Pro?
6) I suppose these SSDs are similar to an Android phone,
and that they give no warning before a problem.
At times, I've found files & folders a tad flaky, and once just disappearing.
7) Finally, any recommendations for a decent 2.5" SATA SSD
to be used for Windows 10?

I HAVE TRIED A NUMBER OF TIMES TO TRY AND SET OUT THIS TEXT
BUT PREVIEW ALWAYS SHOWS IT ALL OVER THE PLACE - SO I HOPE
ABOVE IS LEGIBLE.

Many thanks in advance.
Stephen

You want backups on a removable external drive that is kept offline, unless it is being used to backup or restore.

If your hard drive dies, gets encrypted by ransomware (any attached drives get encrypted as well), or corrupted...your backups are gone too.

Zappastixs said:

1)..... Do I have to prepare a 2.5" SATA SSD to use as a Boot Drive/Win 10?
2) . Can you partition a SATA SSD?
.. . If not, does Computer Management play a role in any way?
3) .. Is the File System still NTFS?

In use a SATA SSD looks to the PC and behaves just a SATA HDD - only much faster. Everything you would do with an HDD you would do the same with an SSD, partitioning, formatting, clean installing Windows - all done as you would for an HDD.

4) . I've also read that when the SSD starts to fill up, they become really slow - is this what happens?
Also that when you delete anything it doesn't free up any space, until a certain amount is free 'per sector'

Is that correct?

The one difference between using an HDD and an SSD comes with drive optimisation. With an HDD you can defragment it, you should never do that on an SSD. Instead there is a TRIM operation you should perform. This tell the SSD which blocks are no longer in use so that it's internal garbage collection can work optimally.

Windows 10's 'Defragment and Optimise Drives' by default will be running on a schedule, it will defrag HDDs and trim SSDs as appropriate. For SSDs they will be trimmed on a monthly schedule, even if you set the schedule to weekly. A monthly trim should be sufficient, but you can always run 'Optimise' manually any time you want.

Trim (computing) - Wikipedia

5) Could you confirm that I would need at least 32 GB to install Windows 10 Pro?

32GB is the absolute bare minimum, but it would not have enough free space to allow feature updates to be done easily. Microsoft now specify that OEMs must provide at least 64GB on all new machines. In practice, I would recommend at least 120GB to be comfortable.

6) I suppose these SSDs are similar to an Android phone, and that they give no warning before a problem.

SSDs, just like HDDs, have SMART data that can be read to give an indication of the drive health. And like HDDs although this data can give advance warning of problems, you cannot rely on it to always warn you in time. You should make regular backups to be safe.

7) Finally, any recommendations for a decent 2.5" SATA SSD

I've been very happy with a Samsung 860 EVO 500GB that I've been using for some 15 month now. It was bought to replace a dying HDD on one of my systems. Before it died completely I made a Macrium system image of it, then restored that to the SSD so that I didn't loose anything and could carry on with the original system as it was before - only much faster..

Zappastixs said:

The other bay HAS TO BE: WD 500GB Black - for storage.
Why 500GB ?
Because I wanted the Storage/Backup hard drive TO BE AT LEAST 2TB - but thatisn't possible anymore, because if you want to play safe you can ONLY USE Western Digital drives that are 500 GB and less

Wow. And just think of all the millions and millions of drives out there that are not Western Digital and that are greater than 500GB.....hmmm. Starting to sound like the great computer crash of 2000 because of the 2K bug that was supposed to plunge the world into darkness and chaos.

NavyLCDR said:

Wow. And just think of all the millions and millions of drives out there that are not Western Digital and that are greater than 500GB.....hmmm. Starting to sound like the great computer crash of 2000 because of the 2K bug that was supposed to plunge the world into darkness and chaos.

I suggest a little Web searching. I'm a little shocked at the variety of 2.5" drives that are SMR, from a range of manufacturers. WD makes a 1TB drive that is PMR, but their larger ones are SMR.

Not sure how big a deal this is in practice, but I wish that manufacturers were a little more forthcoming about their drives. That's not new. In the past, drives were sold at a given capacity with different numbers of platters. (Fewer is better.)

bobkn said:

I suggest a little Web searching. I'm a little shocked at the variety of 2.5" drives that are SMR, from a range of manufacturers. WD makes a 1TB drive that is PMR, but their larger ones are SMR.

Not sure how big a deal this is in practice, but I wish that manufacturers were a little more forthcoming about their drives. That's not new. In the past, drives were sold at a given capacity with different numbers of platters. (Fewer is better.)

Well, the Western Digital Red 2.5" 1TB drive - WD10JFCX - is CMR. So you don't have to stay at or below 500GB just to get CMR. Also, Toshiba L200 2.5" 1TB drive is CMR.

That being said, with the hundreds of millions of SMR drives in use....I'm not rushing out to replace the drives in my various computers.

see comments

Zappastixs said:

2) . Can you partition a SATA SSD?

Sure. An SSD containing Windows would typically have several. A pure data drive might have only 1, but could have more if you want.

3) .. Is the File System still NTFS?

That would be the standard choice.

4) . I've also read that when the SSD starts to fill up, they become really slow - is this what happens?

When copying large amounts of data to them, as you might with a "backup" drive, they can slow down early in the process to some degree. This is largely driven by the SSD controller, the SSD cache and type of memory cells on the SSD. Some drives suffer from this more than others. In the worst case scenario, they might slow temporarily to speeds more often associated with a spinning drive.

In normal day to day operation, I wouldn't worry about it.

On the other hand......are you referring to the "wearing out" phenomenon that got a lot of publicity when SSDs first appeared?? If so, this is way way overblown unless you are really hammering the drive as a commercial business database might be hammered.

5) Could you confirm that I would need at least 32 GB

I certainly wouldn't plan 32. You could get away with it for a short while.

In reality, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many SSDs under 120 GB capacity nowadays.

However, I've been using Windows for 25 years and have never exceeded 45 GB on my C partition. That might be a bit unusual. I don't keep personal data on C.

6) I suppose these SSDs are similar to an Android phone and that they give no warning before a problem.

I think I have heard that advanced warnings of problems are less common on SSDs than on spinning drives.

I had one literally fall into 2 pieces in front of my eyes.

7) Finally, any recommendations for a decent 2.5" SATA SSD to be used for Windows 10?

Crucial MX500 series is a pretty good choice. Easily found, mid level price, been around a while. I'd try to stick with a name brand with decent warranty and support from the vendor, but I wouldn't otherwise get in a major lather about it. Intel, Samsung, Crucial, Western Digital.

I will say that I have heard a lot of horror stories about warranty claims and customer support even from name brands, so cross your fingers.

Zappastixs said:

Could you confirm that I would need at least 32 GB
to install Windows 10 Pro?

A 32 GB requirement is new for clean installs starting with 2004.
It is still possible to upgrade to 2004 or 20H2 with a drive smaller than 32 GB.


https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...specifications


More information on hard drive space requirements to install or update Windows 10

The size of the Windows operating system that comes with your device and the amount of space needed to download and install Windows updates, are highly variable as they depend on a variety of factors.

Visit here to learn why. The factors that impact the amount of free hard drive space needed to take an update include: the versions of Windows previously installed on the machine, the amount of disk space available to reuse from Windows files, such as the virtual memory pagefile or hibernation file, which applications are installed on your device and how those applications store data.

Starting with the May 2019 Update, the system requirements for hard drive size for clean installs of Windows 10 as well as new PCs changed to a minimum of 32GB.

The 32GB or larger drive requirement is set to leave space for users to install apps and to keep data on the device.

Installing Windows or updating from a previous version of Windows on devices with less than 32GB storage will continue to work if the device has enough free space available.

When updating, Windows will attempt to automatically free up enough hard drive space and guide you through freeing up even more if the automatic cleanup is not sufficient.

You can also take steps to free up space on your own.
For more information, see Free up space to install the latest Windows 10 update or visit the related FAQ.

NavyLCDR said:

Well, the Western Digital Red 2.5" 1TB drive - WD10JFCX - is CMR. So you don't have to stay at or below 500GB just to get CMR. Also, Toshiba L200 2.5" 1TB drive is CMR.

That being said, with the hundreds of millions of SMR drives in use....I'm not rushing out to replace the drives in my various computers.

The WD Red was the 1TB drive I meant.

I wondered how likely it was that you have numerous SMR drives. I thought they were too new to be in wide use. Our friends at Wikipedia state that internally managed SMR drives have been shipping since 2013, though. Not so new. I guess the recent controversies involved models labelled as NAS. Buyer beware—that 2TB-6TB “NAS” drive you’ve been eyeing might be SMR | Ars Technica