New harddrive

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Venari

Venari

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I have two HDDs and now a SSHDD.

I've been wondering what should go onto the new drive from the second drive:
My installed games (I hear SSDs are good for reducing load times in some games), or all of my multimedia.

On one hand, my movies, tv shows, and um....amateur videos take up the most space on my drive, and should be moved to the newer, larger SSHD.

On the other hand, I do love my video games, and decreasing the time I spend staring at a load screen is a good thing.

Any suggestions?
 
When I got my first ssd I put my OS and games on it. Faster boot times and smooth running games. For most videos and music I never saw the need. I run all Samsung evo drives now and can't be happier.
 
I have a laptop (1 tb) and an external (1 tb). On the external are book collections, videos, music, image drives. Anything HUGE. to these two, I have a 5tb doing bi-weekly backups of the two drives.

I guess what I'm saying is make sure you focus on backup first ;)
 
BOOT your computer from the new SSD. Place your favorite Applications on the new SSD. Load your GAMES from the SSD (WoW loads in heartbeats for me now).

Media like movies, music, smaller data files, etc. will be fine on the old discs because they don't need to be read any faster than the old drives can transfer them.

Now, if you edited music, movies, images, etc. then you might prefer to work with those very large files from an SSD because then you need to load the whole files before you can start working. But playback is fine on an old drive.
 
On SSD, just OS and apps. On HDD, migrate My Documents to the root. Back up this entire folder regularly.

My policy is to backup (nightly) the HDD, and not the SSD.

On my HDD, but not in the My Documents folder, I also have a Media folder that doesn't get backed up nightly. It contains movies, pictures, and music. The pictures and music get backed up once a month to another set of external HDDs. I did this because I don't want to fill my normal nightly backup volume with 30GB movie torrents and FLAC Pink Floyd discographies.
 
BTW, this is a great utility for figuring out where all your HDD storage went. If you have a SSD and it's getting tight, you can find some HOG apps and temporary files this way. Just run this utility and click the large blocks at the bottom of the screen - the bigger the block, the bigger the file. You'll see, it's very cool. There are utilities that can help you clean up your computer. You probably don't need that now since you're creating a new OS drive.

https://windirstat.info/
 
Shucks. I mounted the new drive and got the cables plugged in, but it's not showing up on "My Computer". My second HDD is plugged in the same way, and THAT shows.
Do SSHDs require another cable I don't know about?

Homercidal said:
Load your GAMES from the SSD (WoW loads in heartbeats for me now).
Click to expand...

I actually JUST cancelled my Sub. 1K+ latency on satellite internet is no good for me, so until I return to Ottawa, I shant be playing anymore. Except for brewfest in September. I need that violet protodrake!
 
Venari said:
Shucks. I mounted the new drive and got the cables plugged in, but it's not showing up on "My Computer". My second HDD is plugged in the same way, and THAT shows.
Do SSHDs require another cable I don't know about?



I actually JUST cancelled my Sub. 1K+ latency on satellite internet is no good for me, so until I return to Ottawa, I shant be playing anymore. Except for brewfest in September. I need that violet protodrake!
Click to expand...

Probably need to partition/format the drive (assuming you've got both power and SATA connected). Make sure to format the correct drive :)

Open Computer Management by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking Computer Management. Administrator permission required If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
 
If the drive is new, then follow Passed advice on formatting. I've seen Windows prompt to install device drivers, but then there is no drive because you haven't partitioned and formatted it yet.

And I still vote for a fresh install of the OS and boot from that drive. You will be amazed at how fast Windows boots and apps run.
 
passedpawn said:
BTW, this is a great utility for figuring out where all your HDD storage went. If you have a SSD and it's getting tight, you can find some HOG apps and temporary files this way. Just run this utility and click the large blocks at the bottom of the screen - the bigger the block, the bigger the file. You'll see, it's very cool. There are utilities that can help you clean up your computer. You probably don't need that now since you're creating a new OS drive.

https://windirstat.info/
Click to expand...

That is a SICK app!

And so small! I believe they must have developed it in Assembly.
 
passedpawn said:
Probably need to partition/format the drive (assuming you've got both power and SATA connected). Make sure to format the correct drive :)
Click to expand...

I've got the two cables going into the drive, and it's not showing up at all. Here are pictures of the physical drives.

Looks like based on popular demand, I guess i'm installing my Windows 7 onto that drive.
Now to find the disc for it...

HDD1.jpg


HDD2.jpg
 
Homercidal said:
That is a SICK app!

And so small! I believe they must have developed it in Assembly.
Click to expand...

Yep, it's a portable app. I love portable apps because you can run them right off a USB thumb drive. For network/pc techs, that's golden.

If you click a folder in the top, it outlines the contents of that folder on the graphical thing below. It is pretty cool.
 
passedpawn said:
Yep, it's a portable app. I love portable apps because you can run them right off a USB thumb drive. For network/pc techs, that's golden.

If you click a folder in the top, it outlines the contents of that folder on the graphical thing below. It is pretty cool.
Click to expand...

After a minute of looking it over I see how you can glance at the graphics and note any large blocks of a certain type of data. Might be useful for scanning network drives for MP3 and Videos... ;)

And I LOVE the tree structure listing used space. Makes finding large blocks of space hogs (Pigs in SPAAAAAACE!) really easy. I should have looked for one of these things years ago!
 
Venari said:
I've got the two cables going into the drive, and it's not showing up at all. Here are pictures of the physical drives.

Looks like based on popular demand, I guess i'm installing my Windows 7 onto that drive.
Now to find the disc for it...
Click to expand...

Again, it's possible that the drive is connected, but Windows doesn't list it as a "drive" yet because it hasn't been partitioned.

Did you partition it?

Can you look in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and see if it's listed as a connected device?

Can you see the drive in the BIOS if you boot to the system setup?

It's also entirely possible that the drive is DOA. It happens once in a while.
 
Homercidal said:
It's also entirely possible that the drive is DOA. It happens once in a while.
Click to expand...
I *did* buy this as "refurbished" on eBay, and I was fervently hoping this wasn't the case.

Once i'm home from work i'll check those steps that you've listed.
 
One test is to plug in the power and listen/feel for the platter to spin up. This will only tell if the control board and motor will spin the drive.

A drive an certainly be bad even if it spins.
 
Homercidal said:
One test is to plug in the power and listen/feel for the platter to spin up. This will only tell if the control board and motor will spin the drive.

A drive an certainly be bad even if it spins.
Click to expand...

Except that SSD's don't have platters to spin. In fact, if anything spins on an SSD it's guaranteed broken.
 
Venari said:
I *did* buy this as "refurbished" on eBay, and I was fervently hoping this wasn't the case.

Once i'm home from work i'll check those steps that you've listed.
Click to expand...

I remember buying a huge Sony Vaio usb thumb drive in a chinese market, only to find out later that there was no memory in it at all. And, Sony never made a USB thumb drive. It really looked legit though.
 
passedpawn said:
I remember buying a huge Sony Vaio usb thumb drive in a chinese market, only to find out later that there was no memory in it at all. And, Sony never made a USB thumb drive. It really looked legit though.
Click to expand...

Kinda like this?
44732_usbchina.jpg


Homercidal said:
Can you look in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and see if it's listed as a connected device?
Click to expand...

Yes, it is listed there in Disk Management. I've gone and formatted it. Thanks!

EDIT: It would appear my install disc for Windows 7 has grown wings and flown away, but I still have the Product key written on the back of my tower.

Is it possible to migrate my OS from a HDD to a SSD? Or will I need to get a disc mailed to me (or download a pirated disc and use my key?)?
 
4TB SSHD is what you have in your picture annotation. An SSHD is a "hybrid" drive and the SSD portion is invisible to the OS. It's used for caching of commonly-used files as a performance accelerator.

It should still be used for OS and games. With 4TB of space, you can put multimedia on if you'd like, or you can put those on one of the other drives. I'd recommend the other drives, so that your multimedia files aren't cached, as they don't need to be.

Is this a WD or Seagate drive?
 
Venari said:
I *did* buy this as "refurbished" on eBay, and I was fervently hoping this wasn't the case.

Once i'm home from work i'll check those steps that you've listed.
Click to expand...

BTW, hard drives are some of the most technologically-advanced items in common usage. The read/write heads literally fly nanometers (single-digit nanometers) above the platters spinning at thousands of RPM. It's akin to a 747 crossing the US flying at supersonic speeds less than a meter off the ground, and taking a picture of each individual blade of grass.

There are a lot of things I'll buy refurbished off eBay. An HDD is not one of them.

If this is the new WD SSHD, and you suspect it's faulty, let me know via PM. I work for WD and can help you navigate tech support.
 
bwarbiany said:
Is this a WD or Seagate drive?
Click to expand...
It's a Seagate drive.

bwarbiany said:
BTW, hard drives are some of the most technologically-advanced items in common usage. The read/write heads literally fly nanometers (single-digit nanometers) above the platters spinning at thousands of RPM. It's akin to a 747 crossing the US flying at supersonic speeds less than a meter off the ground, and taking a picture of each individual blade of grass.

There are a lot of things I'll buy refurbished off eBay. An HDD is not one of them.

If this is the new WD SSHD, and you suspect it's faulty, let me know via PM. I work for WD and can help you navigate tech support.
Click to expand...

After I figured out how to format it, it seems to work well enough. I'll need to figure out how to migrate my OS from the HDD to the SSD. Once that's done I guess I'll see exactly how well it works.
 
GilaMinumBeer said:
Except that SSD's don't have platters to spin. In fact, if anything spins on an SSD it's guaranteed broken.
Click to expand...

Yep. Brain fart.

And since it's a 4T hybrid, ignore the suggestion to put this or that here or there. It will figure out what you want and how it should be stored.

It's basically a large platter drive with an SSD added as a large buffer. I believe they know to place certain system files in SSD portion, along with data you access often. This speeds up most of what's important to load quickly.

If you have the codes on a sticker you should be able to download the install image right from Microsoft or your computer manufacturer.
 
BrewerBear said:
I don't work for WD and wouldn't trust a seagate
Click to expand...

I've seen a few charts that show Seagate has the highest reported failure rate.

But it's still pretty low, all things considered.

I think HGST had some really good ratings, but I see that WD has bought them, so I'm expecting they won't be any better after WD injects their quality standards into the HGST system.
 
I am, looking for the name of the free software I used to migrate from HDD to SSD. It was a little slow, but it worked flawlessly.

EaseUS TODO Backup and EaseUS Partition.

I realize this is off-topic, but my wife told me earlier I need to go to Calm.com as I was running around the house talking to myself. I did this to avoid verbally dismembering someone who shouldn't have touched my effing sprinkler system thinking a gear drive sprinkler was a master valve...

I thought my wife was messing with me, apparently Calm.com does exist.
 
Thanks Minden, I'll check out that Site.

So far all I've done was clean my drive of trash files and then defragmented it. Minecraft keeps butting in on the process, so I haven't gotten around to migrating yet...
 
In the middle of cloning the OS to the SSD. Man this takes some time its been going since this morning. But its now at 91%, so hopefully just a couple hours left.

EDIT:

Apparently I cloned the wrong partition of the wrong drive...all I did was copy all of my movies over to the SSD. Guess I'll just go back to some games and restart this process overnight, making sure I get the right selections this time.
 
MindenMan said:
I am, looking for the name of the free software I used to migrate from HDD to SSD. It was a little slow, but it worked flawlessly.

EaseUS TODO Backup and EaseUS Partition.
Click to expand...

This is the program I used, and it looks like it worked.

However, now there is 1.6 TB of "unallocated" space on the drive that I can't seem to merge with the rest (2.04 TB) of the drive.

EDIT: Just realized this drive is in MBR. Is it possible to have windows installed on it as a GPT?
 
Venari said:
This is the program I used, and it looks like it worked.

However, now there is 1.6 TB of "unallocated" space on the drive that I can't seem to merge with the rest (2.04 TB) of the drive.

EDIT: Just realized this drive is in MBR. Is it possible to have windows installed on it as a GPT?
Click to expand...

I believe so. I think you can actually change types in Windows and then allocate the extra space.
 
My motherboard doesn't support a switch to GPT, so I'll have to make do until I can upgrade.

It has been two weeks and this drive seems to run my OS with no problems.

Thanks everybody for your help :)
 
I too have a larger than desired "un-allocated space on my SDD, and when all my other projects are caught up, I will reformat the drive and get my space back. Right now, the speed is first rate and that is why I went SSD.
 

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