Since Switching To A Solid State Drive (SSD), I’ve Discovered That.... (1 Viewer)

[Tony Bensley]

Since Switching To A Solid State Drive (SSD), I’ve Discovered That....

- Windows Boot up and Login is much faster (30 – 35 seconds combined total!)

- Apps run far more smoothly, with much fewer “Not Responding” incidents.

- Windows 10 clean install had completed within 35 minutes.

Furthermore, a number of issues that had developed over time were eradicated, or at least significantly reduced. These include:

- Powering off: This used to take about a minute or so, and sometimes wouldn’t complete at all, until I pressed and held down the Power Button. Also, a lot of times, I would have to hold down the Power Button for a forced shutdown instead of turning off Windows properly, via the Taskbar. Now, powering down only takes a few seconds.

- Peripheral Plugins: It had reached the point where my Acer Aspire PC Laptop wouldn’t get past the Acer Logo if anything was plugged into my USB 3 connection. With the new SSD, this is no longer an issue. As an added bonus, certain devices that only worked when plugged directly into one of the Laptop USB outlets will now work when plugged into one of my secondary USB Docking Stations.

In a nutshell, all of the above problems were being caused by an increasingly failing non SDD, SATA Platter Based Hard Drive. The peripheral plugin issue, in particular, seemed indicative of a possibly failing Motherboard. I’m so glad that wasn’t the case!

No longer having to perform Disk Defragmenting or chkdsk tasks is also a really nice bonus in having switched from HDD to SSD! Both applications are, in fact, highly detrimental to their longevity, I’ve been told.

The one detriment in my switch to SSD? The cost per GB of disk space. However, I’ve found that the above advantages more than make up for my reduced onboard Hard Drive capacity (222 GB vs 682 GB on my original Hard Drive!). There’s always the External Hard Drive go to option, anyway.

I’d be interested in reading other peoples experiences in switching over to Solid State Drives, be it the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is one thing I wish I had done years ago, except it probably was more cost prohibitive in the early going!

CHEERS!

 

[Gew]

Switching to SSD for operating system was definitely one of my better decision this decade. Everything runs smoother and I don't have to bother defragmenting every now and then.

 

[Elizabeth S]

I love the SSD!! Such quick log-on and off. On my desktop, only the Operating System is on the SSD and I have a regular 1 TB hard drive for photos, videos, documents, etc.. I'm thinking of swapping out for a bigger hard drive as my photos and videos have filled it up pretty quickly. For now, I'm using external HDs for backup copies.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Replacing my HDD with a SSD several years ago is one of the reasons I am using a 7-year old MacBook Pro that still runs like a new machine.

 

[Kevin Hewell]

and I don't have to bother defragmenting every now and then.

Ugh! You just reminded me I have to do that.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Ugh! You just reminded me I have to do that.

And I'll probably have to remind myself NOT to defrag, every now and then, although it hasn't been a problem, so far!

CHEERS!

 

[BobO'Link]

Even on spinning platters there's little need to "defrag." Once upon a time, when drives were small and slow, it could help things launch faster. With today's speeds (both platter and head) on spinning platter drives you'd be hard pressed to notice any difference after a defrag session.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Even on spinning platters there's little need to "defrag." Once upon a time, when drives were small and slow, it could help things launch faster. With today's speeds (both platter and head) on spinning platter drives you'd be hard pressed to notice any difference after a defrag session.

Over time, I definitely did notice a difference after defragging my HDD, although I would go for lengthy periods between defrags. I'm thinking it's a mileage may vary situation, according to how one uses their PC. On Auslogics Disk Defragmenter, my old drive was displayed as over 40% fragmented in its final failing stage.

CHEERS!

 

[Kevin Hewell]

Even on spinning platters there's little need to "defrag." Once upon a time, when drives were small and slow, it could help things launch faster. With today's speeds (both platter and head) on spinning platter drives you'd be hard pressed to notice any difference after a defrag session.

Still, it's nice to get rid of the "extraneous" stuff.

 

[Thomas Newton]

Still, it's nice to get rid of the "extraneous" stuff.

Defragmentation isn't about deleting any "extraneous stuff". It is about gathering together the scattered pieces of files and of free space so that the computer does not need to keep moving the heads all over the place while accessing files.

 

[JohnRice]

I run entirely on Mac, but I discovered the wonder of SSD 5 or 6 years ago. It did require a fundamental change to how I organize stuff, but now I'm used to having nothing but OS and apps on the boot drive, even with SSD prices significantly lower now. My newest Mac has an NVMe drive, which has as big a speed boost over regular SSD as SSD has over a basic platter drive. It think the read speeds it accomplishes (3,500MB/s) is way beyond the point of diminishing returns.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Recent BSOD issues (Which it turns out, may have been caused by my Windows drivers being out of date) caused me to look into whether my 2 year old SSD might be failing. Two different software apps that I downloaded yesterday displayed its health as "Good."

My question and concern relates to the 61% that is right below "Good" on the CrystalDiskInfo software and in the "Wear and Tear" heading on the "Kingston SSD Manager" app.

Assuming that all things are equal in terms of my usage, does this mean I can expect about another 3 good years before my SSD wear and tear is down to 0%, or should I be taking mitigating steps now? I understand this is somewhat a guide, but I need this drive to last as long as possible since I can't afford to replace anything that breaks down.

CHEERS!

 

[Tony Bensley]

OK, bumping my own topic!

More than 2 and a half years after my most recent post, and just about 5 years after purchasing my Kingston A400 240 GB SSD, its Health Status now reads as “Bad 0%” as seen below:

My question is what might be a reasonable expected time frame between reaching 0% and SSD failure? All of the other stats appear to be fine, at the present. I get that “might be” phrase is likely doing some heavy lifting. I used up the last 61% of “Good” Health Status in a little over 2.5 years, if this provides any clue?

That said, I am also looking into getting a replacement solid state drive for if/when the existing solid state drive fails. While I had briefly considered replacing my 10 year old PC Laptop late last year, this just isn’t financially viable for me, at the present. I have noticed that SSD’s have come down somewhat in price compared to 5 years ago, when I paid around $45 for the above 240 SSD. While a 240/256gb ssd now goes for around the $30 CDN range on Amazon Canada, I’ve seen some 480/512 gb ssd’s in the $45 - $50 range, which I’m just a bit shy of, when figuring in tax. If all else fails, I’ll get the 240/256gb ssd, but I’m really eyeing a 480/512gb capacity for replacement purposes.

Any thoughts?

CHEERS!

 

[JohnRice]

I would replace it now. You got 5 years use out of a $45 drive? Seems like a good deal to me.

 

[Tony Bensley]

I would replace it now. You got 5 years use out of a $45 drive? Seems like a good deal to me.

Right now, I do have enough for the smaller 256gb capacity, but I think I'm going to try and hold off until closer to my Birthday in late April, in case I can get a just a little bit more $ to cover the 480 or 512gb capacity. If I remember correctly, somebody on here told me you don't really want to go higher capacity like a 1 terabyte ssd, as this would somewhat offset the faster loading speeds solid state drives afford, plus that would be too expensive for me.

CHEERS!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

What kind of disc do you need? NVME?

 

[Tony Bensley]

What kind of disc do you need? NVME?

My very limited understanding of NVMe's is they are kind of a hard drive/RAM hybrid? I'm suspecting that wouldn't be functional on my decade old Acer PC Laptop?

In any case, I've actually just broke down and ordered this Kuesuny 480GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD SATA Drive, as this is in my price affordability range:

For me, the last straw was my current Kingston ssd now only scans in Read Only mode in the chkdsk command line. While no errors were found, I can imagine disk failure may not be that far off, and I need my main drive to be fully functional (Obviously), which includes fix error capability. More importantly, I have been noticing some issues on my PC of late, which would presumably be consistent with a main drive that's on or nearing its last legs.

CHEERS!

 

[JohnRice]

My very limited understanding of NVMe's is they are kind of a hard drive/RAM hybrid? I'm suspecting that wouldn't be functional on my decade old Acer PC Laptop?

In any case, I've actually just broke down and ordered this Kuesuny 480GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD SATA Drive, as this is in my price affordability range:
View attachment 214152
For me, the last straw was my current Kingston ssd now only scans in Read Only mode in the chkdsk command line. While no errors were found, I can imagine disk failure may not be that far off, and I need my main drive to be fully functional (Obviously), which includes fix error capability. More importantly, I have been noticing some issues on my PC of late, which would presumably be consistent with a main drive that's on or nearing its last legs.

CHEERS!

NVMe drives are a new form of extremely fast SSD. Also extremely small. They’re not a viable option for your situation though. I’m glad you went ahead and got a new drive. It’s not worth risking a failure.

 

[Tony Bensley]

NVMe drives are a new form of extremely fast SSD. Also extremely small. They’re not a viable option for your situation though. I’m glad you went ahead and got a new drive. It’s not worth risking a failure.

Thanks, John! Only being able to run CHKDSK in read-only mode this morning was a huge red flag for me. Thankfully, I had sufficient funds for a larger capacity main drive (480 GB vs 240 GB), which was what I was hoping for!

CHEERS!

 

[Tony Bensley]

Of course, as per Murphy's Law, my initial order ended up generating a "Payment Declined" email from Amazon, despite my being 99.9 % certain the payment method was already the correct unexpired one with the sufficient funds attached. Nevertheless, I did go through the motions of updating my payment method (Which was already pre-selected among my several options, hence my rather strong suspicion!), and am now waiting on tenterhooks (A slightly longer time has now passed since my first failed attempt with no new notification of declined payment!) to see whether or not this attempt goes without a hitch.