HDD Hoarding (upgrades and backups)
 

I need advice. I have two laptops and a variety of old hard drives. I'm trying to decide whether a new ssd is worrh it.

I have a 240gb crucial ssd and 1TB hdd which I use as a backup drive that takes forever to backup using Windows backup.

What SSD would be he best bang for my buck to replace the 240gb?
Is there backup software that I can buy to use with my current 1TB hdd, or do I have to buy a new drive with software?



As a side note, I also have (1) 200gb hdd from my old MacBook pro, (1) 500gb ide and (1) 80gb ide drives sitting around. Is there any use for these anymore?

There is a hot deal on Slickdeals.net right now for a crucial 1tb ssd for $220. As for cloning, there are tools but you'd need a second working computer that you could plug both drives into via external caddies to do it. I'm not up to date personally on what the best software is. I use opportunities like this as a point to start over with a fresh os install and reorganize my content. If most of the old data is archive, buy and external enclosure and use it as an external drive. If you're not already using cloud storage for your day to day files you're doing it wrong.

No idea whether a new SSD is worth it for you or not...what's wrong with the current one?

I use EaseUS Todo Backup software for my backups.

Ah, I am currently running out of space on the 240gb drive. Maybe cloud storage is an option...I don't know where to start with that. The only thing I know about cloud storage is that Google Drive, iCloud, and Windows something or other pop up a lot in my 'promotions' mailbox on gmail.

Top SSDs are made by Samsung and Intel, but they will be a bit more expensive than lower tier brands. If it's a question of money - just get whatever is well well rated and on sale at the moment (today is a good day to buy).

For backup - if your needs are simple and you just want efficient and well designed free software, get Veeam End Point Free. This company makes probably world's best commercial backup software for enterprise environments.

EaseUS TODO is fine, but not as refined and support is not as good. It does offer a few more features though.

Do you store everything on the SSD? Pretty easy, on Win10 at least, to setup the SSD as boot and programs only. Then setup the 1TB to store data only.

You can buy a 3Tb+ portable drive to use as a backup drive if you need it.

How long have you had that 1TB hd? Its probably a slow slow oldie considering its size. Any new 2-4TB HD will probably run miles around it.
Grabbing a new hybrid drive (ssd + hdd combined) will probably be enough. If 1 TB is your backup then your obviously not having space issues.

Otherwise if its accessed alot grab a larger SSD. They are all comparable these days to probably less than ~10% difference. Google 'SSD roundup' and you will have your answers.

Your older drives will probably be earlier SATA speed = slow as. Throw them, they will probably die if used and you will lose data anyway.

Oh nice. We use Veeam at work but I didn't realize they had a free individual license product. I'll have to check it out.

I tried using AOMEI Backupper for a while, but it never played nice with my NAS server. It would back up successfully for a couple nights and then randomly start failing authentication or authorization. I tried TODO and it worked reliably, and then when they had a sale I bought a paid license for $10 so that I could have email notifications for failed backups.

I use Syncback for making my back up. Free, decent and simple.

I have so many hard drives laying around from over the years. Probably 10 or so 3.5" drives and a dozen and a half 2.5" (but I have a fleet of old laptops for running a portable Lan game so... )

I like to use the Samsung 850 evo/pro SSDs, we use them at work a lot to run HMI PCs for industrial stuff. An internal 512GB can be had for ~$200-250. Are the two drives you mentioned hooked up to your motherboard or external? What are you storing and how important is the info on a scale of 1-10? I'm not familiar with backup software but if you want to go that route, I would suggest getting software that can do backups at scheduled times, and specific directories. This way you can do overnight backups and only the files that changed from the last backup.

Whatever you use for backups - make sure that backup application is backing up directly to a password protected storage/share and saves those within application. If you are backing up to a local drive (USB, FireWire, etc) or mapped network share - a crypto-locker virus will encrypt your backups along with primary data, thus rendering them useless. CryptoLocker can't provide proper credentials to storage that requires authentication upon connection.

I've seen crypto take entire businesses hostage, and I've seen enterprises recover from infection without much issue. It's all about preparation and initial approach.

Catching up on this post. I'm about ready to finally upgrade from my 250gb ssd. I've got only 20gb left on it.

The new drive is going into my laptop which is with me almost 24-7 and is 10/10 on my criticality scale. The data is important to me, like photos and old school data that I reference time to time.

1TB Sata drive will allow me to throw all my pictures and music onto the one computer/drive. So for SSD, the Samsung EVO 850 looks the most secure and trusted, but most expensive.

Is there any argument against the Samsung? (Compared to Crucial, Mishkin, Sandisk X400)

We've been using the Samsung PRO and EVO drives at work, no issues at all.

I will tell you to stay away from PNY. They have gotten good reviews as a budget option, but I just had one die at the one year mark (it happens) and PNY customer service is trying to screw me out of the stated warranty coverage (this should not happen).

I'm pretty sure I've been using a Samsung EVO in my personal laptop for 3 ish years now, have had no issues with it.

Picked up a 525Gb Crucial M300 on sale for $140 today. It'll give me an extra 300GB, so for the price I couldn't pass it up. I don't game anymore so this should suit me well for a well.