Yes was looking at a Saegate Ironwolf NAS drive or the newer Seagate Barricuda Pro which has enterprise build quality and a 5 year warranty plus performance to boot
Having said that I have been running Seatools on my drive and so far it is passing the tests where the similar tests using the built in Dell utility software was reporting a fail. !! Running the long tests now and see what happens. It is possible that a virus may have clobbered the drive and I have been chasing a red herring. Or by enabling Hybernate mode may have caused issues !! Will investigate further. Fun and games with PC's
These days SSDs are much better and unless your usage pattern is truly extroadinary you can pretty much stop worrying about them wearing out for any half decent consumer SSD. They all have reserved capacity for the wear levelling algorithms to use and if you wish you can help that along a bit by leaving an extra bit (10% is enough) free. Leave that as unformatted space *don't* allocate it all as file system and leave some of that free which doesn't work.
And if you are going to mirror SSDs, i'd suggest mirroring two different SSDs just in case (At home I was bitten by the Crucial data related firmware bug a few years ago).
I have used SSD with an old powerfull CPU. The PC is fast, but the CPU can work much harder so the fan is very active/noisy.
I also recomend making a copy/image of the new installation with programs to a portable disk. WD has some good tools to download if you use wd bacup disk
Then you save some time next time;-)
I also recomend making a copy/image of the new installation with programs to a portable disk. WD has some good tools to download if you use wd bacup disk
Then you save some time next time;-)
Software and Firmware Downloads | WD Support
Go to: Acronis True Image WD Edition
With preinstalled windows then sometimes only one disk change is permitted. So the image must be from the disk where windows was originally installed. Learned this the hard way going from
Spinning drive->small SSD from image->bigger SSD from small SSD image(failed)
Go to: Acronis True Image WD Edition
With preinstalled windows then sometimes only one disk change is permitted. So the image must be from the disk where windows was originally installed. Learned this the hard way going from
Spinning drive->small SSD from image->bigger SSD from small SSD image(failed)
Last edited:
I ended up getting the top of the line Sandisk Extreme Pro 480gb SSD which is a WD company btw. The alternative was a Samsung 850 EVO or better 850 Pro but the Pro was on back order at the time. Anyway the Sandisk Extreme Pro gets rave reviews and is the top of the class in terms of performance next to the Samsung Pro.
I will be spending the next few days reinstalling everything. No point trying to ghost the old hard disk as it has become totally unreliable and usually hangs the whole system
For bulk storage I did however get a 2TB Seagate Barracuda Pro and not the entry level Barracuda rubbish that I was using.
cheers
I will be spending the next few days reinstalling everything. No point trying to ghost the old hard disk as it has become totally unreliable and usually hangs the whole system
For bulk storage I did however get a 2TB Seagate Barracuda Pro and not the entry level Barracuda rubbish that I was using.
cheers
Then if you install reinstall Windows and the Barracuda is empty you could make a image of the SSD (after all programs are installed ) on the Barracuda.
With image I mean bitperfect image. You then use 480gig of the barracuda for a "mint condition" installation image. (I would also buy a 500gig external to make a backup image.)
The other partition, 1500 Gb, can be used for data.
Then it is superfast to "get back to start" if the SSD breaks or other mishaps.
With image I mean bitperfect image. You then use 480gig of the barracuda for a "mint condition" installation image. (I would also buy a 500gig external to make a backup image.)
The other partition, 1500 Gb, can be used for data.
Then it is superfast to "get back to start" if the SSD breaks or other mishaps.
I like Acronis True Image. I used Ghost many years ago. Then started using Windows back up in Windows 7, but it wouldn't backup to large external hard drives because the sector size is different. I don't believe they fixed the issue with Win7.
You can resize using Disk Management built into Windows. And it only saves data. Not empty space.
Last edited:
I have a 1T partition on the hard drive for all of the install software and extra stuff. Perhaps I can partition this for the image ? Is it possible to partition a drive with stuff already on it ?
I've created a partition on my main hard drive and renamed it Drive "R" for Recovery but you need to also save it elsewhere in case your drive fails.
I believe you have to shrink the existing partition and then create a new partition from the unused space.
You are still asking for trouble if relying on a single HDD for your data, even with a better quality drive. The MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) gives less likelihood but it is, nonetheless, a mean. A NAS with mirrored drives gives far more confidence, is fast, and accessible by more than one computer.
If you are doing disk management, I suggest Minitool Partition Wizard. I've used it for some years and it works particularly well, finding and fixing media Windows doesn't recognise.
Sort of, Mirror is one type of RAID. There are many different raid levels but raid 1 is simple disk mirroring and an appropriate choice if you just have a couple of disks and your goal is to protect yourself from one of them failing.
Other raid levels are principally about managing larger number of disks and shuffle the comprises around between protection/performance and available capacity. None of the other raid levels are usually of any interest for home/desktop use.
Yes all this is possible but with a not insignificant risk of losing your data. I'd strongly advise anyone to *not* muck about with existing partitions holding data unless you have sufficient good backups and/or independent copies that you are happy to lose the original.
This is very good advice. But do get a decent one that does actually have (at least) two mirrored disks in it
Last edited:
If you are not going the RAID way ANDThe destination disk is EMPTY:
How to automatically clone a disk with Acronis True Image WD Edition software
How to automatically clone a disk with Acronis True Image WD Edition software | WD Support
How to automatically clone a disk with Acronis True Image WD Edition software
How to automatically clone a disk with Acronis True Image WD Edition software | WD Support
There are two types of RAID mirror;
Hardware, which is the normal type where data is written to both drives, and
Software , which has two HDDs but the data is written to the drives by software.
While this may seem trifling, the problem with hardware RAID is that it (the controller software) expects both drives to be identical. If there is bit-rot (when ones or zeros disappear), hardware RAID may become confused. Whether it can cause problems in a two disk array is questionable though.
Software RAID (such as that in FreeNAS with ZFS file system) does scheduled "scrubs" to look for bit-rot and other integrity problems and tries to fix the problem, that is, replaces the defective file with the file that passes the integrity check. I have used FreeNAS for several years and have not lost any files.
The HP microserver I referred to earlier gives server grade capability for minimal cost.