Never own a hard drive again

[FISH4BUGS]

I just set up my new computer - 16gb ram, 1 tb SSD drive, Windows 11 pro.
From a cold boot, 10 seconds later, the machine is ready to work.
Screamingly fast, and I will NEVER own another traditional hard drive again.
If you are getting a new box, get the SSD drive.
The only way to fly.

[gmsharps]

That is an absolute fact. The ssd drive is the way to go. The prices have finally came down to an affordable price. The speed is unbelievable. If you need additional storage you could go with a regular external hard drive but for boot up time and bringing up programs especially working on photos and large files the ssd can’t be beat.

Gmsharps

[downzero]

I just set up my new computer - 16gb ram, 1 tb SSD drive, Windows 11 pro.
From a cold boot, 10 seconds later, the machine is ready to work.
Screamingly fast, and I will NEVER own another traditional hard drive again.
If you are getting a new box, get the SSD drive.
The only way to fly.


I've had an SSD for the last 12 years but still use spinny drives for my gopro files and photos and such. It's getting time to build a new box and I will transfer my 2 magnetic drives to the new unit most likely, but certainly for the OS and your software, the SSD is the way to go.

[GregLaROCHE]

I wish I had one.

[Scrounge]

I just set up my new computer - 16gb ram, 1 tb SSD drive, Windows 11 pro.
From a cold boot, 10 seconds later, the machine is ready to work.
Screamingly fast, and I will NEVER own another traditional hard drive again.
If you are getting a new box, get the SSD drive.
The only way to fly.

You'll feel differently when the SSD dies. The best option is an SSD AND a hard drive. Blistering fast boot and lots of storage. Set up your file storage on the HD, operating system on the SSD. When the boot drive goes away on you, it won't take your file system with it. I lost most of half a terabyte of metalworking data the last time my HD died. And from what I've read, SSD's don't usually last as long as an HD if you write/rewrite a lot of data to them. Same problem with SD/microSD & flash drives. I've killed a bunch of both over the last few years.

[imashooter2]

2 is one and one is none. Never truer than with data.

My stuff is on a primary hard drive, backed up on a secondary hard drive and a third copy on an NAS drive not inside the box.

That said, I’d love it if the primary drive was an SSD.

[Land Owner]

No system is perfect. Today's technology is tomorrow's trash. Never say "Never". That is tempting fate.

There is no longer a port for 5.5" (what?) or 3.5" floppy, though floppies (containing data) still exist. Thumb and CD drives are out. USB-A sockets are out. Micro-sockets are in. Phones are the PC of the day. "The Cloud" is the public's repository for storage. Browsers spy on every online keystroke. Privacy is "assured" (Ha!).

In long-term memory, I can still hear AOL dialing up "ding-ding-dong...", Mom (mostly) and Dad trying to figure out "that confounded" email, the conflicts that arise out of MicroSoft and Apple platform "upgrades", CAD in the early 80's, programming and doing research on an 8088 single 5.5" floppy (no hard) drive with 256K of total storage, and the days before Spyware and Virus protection. We've come a long way!

All of that just to say, I don't even know what an SSD drive is. I suppose, in not knowing, I have no clue what I am missing. Then again, I am not displeased with the hardware I own and use, delayed response or not. I'll probably go to my sunset with a hard drive.

[Big Tom]

Wait until you get an NVRAM based one, directly on the mainboard. About 100 times faster than the Sata based SSD :-) You will never go back to SSD LOL

[Wayne Smith]

No system is perfect. Today's technology is tomorrow's trash. Never say "Never". That is tempting fate.

There is no longer a port for 5.5" (what?) or 3.5" floppy, though floppies (containing data) still exist. Thumb and CD drives are out. USB-A sockets are out. Micro-sockets are in. Phones are the PC of the day. "The Cloud" is the public's repository for storage. Browsers spy on every online keystroke. Privacy is "assured" (Ha!).

In long-term memory, I can still hear AOL dialing up "ding-ding-dong...", Mom (mostly) and Dad trying to figure out "that confounded" email, the conflicts that arise out of MicroSoft and Apple platform "upgrades", CAD in the early 80's, programming and doing research on an 8088 single 5.5" floppy (no hard) drive with 256K of total storage, and the days before Spyware and Virus protection. We've come a long way!

All of that just to say, I don't even know what an SSD drive is. I suppose, in not knowing, I have no clue what I am missing. Then again, I am not displeased with the hardware I own and use, delayed response or not. I'll probably go to my sunset with a hard drive.

I guess we are somewhat similar. I wrote my dissertation on an Apple 11e, dual floppy disk drive, and Wordstar 1.1. It had a modem, blindingly fast at 300baud. I don't know what an SSD drive is either.

[schutzen-jager]

i do not comprehend a word that was said !

[trebor44]

SSD as primary but a 2.5 sata external HD for "Full system" or image backup. Or use another external HD that has the capacity for the backup.

[Stacts]

For those that indicated confusion as to SSD: "SSD" stands for Solid State Drive. It's a storage drive that uses flash chips for storage instead of a spinning, magnetic platter. They are much faster than HDD's (Hard Disk Drives) but usually of lesser capacity for the same price. Furthermore, they slow down as their capacity is filled and they have a set lifetime (In read-write operations).

They come in two varieties:
1) SATA
2)NVME

SATA is the same interconnect used by HDD's for many years. HDD's usually can't saturate the bandwidth of a SATA connection, but SSD's frequently can. NVME is a much faster connection and allows SSD's to be even faster. NVME SSD's are (usually) a slight bit more expensive and require a modern (last 5-8 years or so...) motherboard.

One last note: Try to keep from completely filling up an SSD or it might fail prematurely. They're cheap enough now that upgrading to bigger one won't break the bank, and it's much less of a headache than having a drive crash and taking your data with it.
***

I use a 1TB SSD in my desktop as its boot drive and 6TB's of HDD for mass-storage. Love the setup! Lightening quick boots and storage enough to last me one more year! My laptop has a 256GB SSD and it too boots up extremely quick.

[Electrod47]

Captain Kirk promised me my Commodore 128 was going to take me into the future. I'm on a 199.00 dollar Chrome Book today thats over 10 years old. It just started slowing down recently. Guess I'll be getting a new one soon. Cheap Chrome Books and the Cloud and a Samsung Smart phone keep me going these days. Hello Moto!

[MT Gianni]

I'm getting notices that windows 7 is soon to be in the no longer supported status.

[racepres]

Very old dell laptop, running Linux...Lightning Fast

[DougGuy]

I just set up my new computer - 16gb ram, 1 tb SSD drive, Windows 11 pro.
From a cold boot, 10 seconds later, the machine is ready to work.
Screamingly fast, and I will NEVER own another traditional hard drive again.
If you are getting a new box, get the SSD drive.
The only way to fly.

Sorry to bust the ol' bubble, but almost ALL of the newer machines have an NVME slot onboard, nvme drive is 10x faster than the fastest SSD... I use the NVME to boot from, have linux installed on it, and I use the 2TB SSD to store pics, music, downloads, backup copies of my FF profile, etc...


Very old dell laptop, running Linux...Lightning Fast

Same here, old Dell Precision M4600 uses nvme to boot Linux Mint Cinnamon from, separate SSD for storage and a 3rd SSD in a DVD tray adapter for more storage.

[MaryB]

As mentioned, your O/S and files that are easily replaced from DVD or download can go on the SSD. Data you do not want to lose goes on a regular hard drive. SSD's can only be written to so many times before they fail and are not meant to store data that changes a lot. ANY data that changes often MUST go to a hard drive, like your browser cache files... my checking account data... my ham radio log book file gets written to daily... that will destroy a SSD in short order. When I was doing laser engraving I was editing images daily...

[stubshaft]

I use two separate laptops one with a standard hard drive and the other with SSD. You know which one hardly gets used.

[scattershot]

Anyone else here reminded of the old TV commercial, where the judge was sitting on the bench saying mumbo…jumbo. Mumbo..jumbo.?

You guys might as well be speaking Swahili.

[MostlyLeverGuns]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

[45_Colt]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

Just had to go and do it :-P

Yes, I remember, DEC-10's, punch cards, paper tape, fat-fingering in programs on mini's. Jeez, those where the days. 160 baud modems, 300 was the latest 'fast' setup. Acoustic couplers, yikes, then the 14.4 modems came about...

Funny part was, knowing the low level computer architecture helped years down the road. Little-endian, big-endian, bit mapped words, DB programmers didn't have a clue about that stuff. But was in fact a part of their every day life.

Now I'm semi-retired and still haven't been able to get away from it (self-employed).

45_Colt

[FISH4BUGS]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

Oh I certainly do. I started with an IBM 5120 and a program called BRADS. I didn't know squat about computers (1980ish) but the President of the company wanted the inventory computerized. Guess who got the job.
I went on to develop a rudimentary MRP system, then graduated to IBM 370/158 mainframe with punch cards running a full blown MRP system, then got into the first IBM PC's. 64k dual 360k floppies running WordStar 1.0, and started computer consulting in 1982 and have been at it since then. Great way to make a living all these 40 years.....
....but I still use a flip phone.

[scattershot]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

First computer I ever saw was in the mid- 60s, and it took up the whole first floor of a pretty good sized office building.

[SeabeeMan]

Absolutely! I'm the IT guy for a small school district in NW WI and we are currently replacing every single spinning platter drive with SSD in our lab computers, a move which will buy us at least 2-3 more years of life out of them. My recent gaming PC build has M.2. NVME drives right on the motherboard.

The only standard drives I still use for anything are a few 6-8TB externals I use to backup my computers. A complete image of the operating drive goes on one partition, with all my media from my storage drive in another. Then that one goes in the gun safe, the one that was in there comes out and gets an identical backup, then that one goes off site.

[Scrounge]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

May to October of 1986, I worked on an IBM System 360/70 for Uncle Sam. It ran the radar at Eglin AFB, Site C-6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglin_AFB_Site_C-6 IIRC, it had 16KB of magnetic core memory, and 16 analog delay lines. There was a card in the system that fried, and the replacement cost about $5k. That was a bit less than a third of my annual income that year. Traces blown off the card, and many of the components anywhere from lightly toasted to quite well fried. I rebuilt it, and got it running again. IIRC, they Winchester drives on their system. At the time, I had a Commodore C-64, with 64KB of RAM, IIRC about 32KB of ROM, with dual 1571 5-1/4" floppy drives. In one of the boxes in storage, I've still got a C-64, monitor, and at least of a couple of the 1571 drives. Seems to me they were 160KB each... Got an ice chest full of floppy drives. Been playing with computers since 1978 or so. RCA Cosmac Elf was my first computer, TRS-80 Model 1 Level 1 my first appliance computer... A few years ago, I cleared out all the carcasses of PC-clone computers from my house. Something like 300 of them. I'm not an addict! I can quit any time!

Bill <--- I got better. There are only 5 desktops under or on my desk, and three laptops, two inkjet printers, and probably I still have 30 or 40 hard drives laying about... And IIRC, there's a anti-static bag with a Pentium Mobo in the front workshop. I said better, not cured!

[varmintpopper]

I remember, Started with a Burroughs B-26


Good Shooting

Lindy

[Land Owner]

What an avalanche of off-topic "memories" sprang from comments about not knowing the term, or use, of SSD.

Lotus 1-2-3 was the forerunner of MicroSoft Excel.
Norton was the King of software to untangle PC "problems".
Software was simpler.
VAX computers were huge machines.
CPU-connect charges were high.
Punch card chad produced the most generous "rain" as college football confetti - what a mess!
Programming was taught in Fortran, COBAL, and C++ that were first and foremost compact and without the deadly "endless do-loop".
This was the dark ages before the Internet.

MUCH LATER
RAM, ROM, and storage slowly increased.
The Internet was "born".
Dial-up was slow.
AOL gave away its browser software CD's in every convenience store across America. I had about 300 of them (and others), was going to put them downrange and shoot them as targets, then thought better of not adding that much plastic to my environment.

[Daekar]

Just to reiterate, neither SSDs nor spinning drives are 100% reliable. It's not if they'll fail, but when. If you want to keep something important, it MUST be in at least two places at once, preferably more.

[KenH]

So far nobody has mentioned the old single sided 5-1/4" disks. Remember cutting a notch so both sides could be used? Seems like it was 1986 when I got the first C-64 with disk drive and TV for monitor. Now I've got those NVME SSDs on the MB for better speed. Makes my regular SSDs seem slow. Here's what I've got in my "Radio" box.

1 TB NVME HD: Access time: 0.03 sec, Read rate: 5.5 GB/s

500 GB SATA SSD: Access time: 0.08 sec, Read rate: 2.3 GB/s

1 TB SATA HD (spinner): Access time: Access time: 0.09 sec, Read rate: 1/2 GB/s

[MaryB]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

I learned to program on paper tape and a teletype machine, dial up account to the U of MN mainframe where I had a whopping 256k of storage(typical student got 32k... I was not typical...) on the drive. At home I had an Altair 8800, green screen monitor, and a floppy drive when they came out. And an acoustic modem to access my account at the U of MN... I wrote a rudimentary word processor and some of my code made it into a commercial product! My teacher didn't have a clue, just gave me an A and shook his head. He couldn't read the code, if it went beyond Print "hi" he was lost...

[elmacgyver0]

Ah, yes, Commodore 64!
It was truly amazing what those could all do with 64 kilobytes of memory.

[georgerkahn]

Bion, one of the labs where I worked had drives which took eight-inch (8") floppies. They were king of the hill, so to speak, as -- if my memory serves me correctly -- they had a 1 meg (plus a little) capacity -- which, at the time, was moot -- as everyone there -- with their 30meg hard drive desktops -- were confident that, in any one's lifetime -- they'd never even come close to filling it!
Interesting, and perhaps a bit germane to this site, is IBM's first marketable hard drive was called "The Winchester" -- named in honor of the Model 94 Winchester .30WCF rifle. Yup -- the term Winchester comes from it having 30MB of fixed storage and 30MB of removable storage! (Betcha nothing in today's Political Correct and Then Some world would be named after a firearm, eh?)
geo

[popper]

The 'crunch' to all computer memory is the interface. SATA helps as it is a 'pipe' structure vs a block structure. Still gets slowed by the processor 'interface'. SSD is NVRAM. It is faster as there is no rotating disk waiting to 'find' the data. Both have limited lifetime. Boot time is faster as it doesn't load into ram (in most systems).

[Rapier]

When a super speed Stata drive blows up, it is real special. Good to have a steel cabinet.....been there done that.

[slim1836]

We had 80 line punch cards where I worked in the 70's, key punch operator was the best, never missed a stroke. Computer room was climate controlled and tape driven. Phone dial up and boxes of cards fed into the computer but if the phone link went down, the process started over. I hated those times, glad I was a cartographic draftsman.

I did take Basic Computer in college but hated it so I went a different way. Basic, Fortran, and Cobalt could kiss it in my book, I wanted the outdoors so I went with construction inspection.

Skip to today, My computer runs off Windows 7 and has been dying for years. I need another computer badly but they want to sell you a computer, then have you pay to update it yearly. Nope, not going to do that, it's like paying to rent programming. I'm not smart enough to understand all that's involved now a days. I just want a computer that works when I turn it on.

Same with printers, I have gone through several and each one has gone south. Same issues, the print looks like carp or does not print at all. Granted, I don't use it much, but when I need to, it doesn't work. Throw it out and get another and a year later, same issue. I have run the "clean heads" program until I'm blue in the face, cleaned the ink faces, but there is only so much I can do. I am printer-less as I type.

Same with internet service. I am wireless and have two extenders to help boost the signal, what a jumble of carp. I am offline more than on.

I hate techno stuff but most of us rely on them, wish I knew what to do. I just don't understand all this stuff, I'm just a simple man trying to make things work. Like Dillon stuff, buy once, but what to buy? I'll bet that others are in the same boat.

Slim

[DougGuy]

Slim I know you must have seen quite a few threads that detail users frustrated and somewhat under the learning curve, and eventually the replies steer the thread into suggestions to move to Linux Mint. This is actually the easiest and simplest way to get away from M$ and their forced upgrades, and their dropping support for classes of chipsets that cause the user to be forced into buying new hardware so winblowz will run on it.

Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition looks and feels and runs like Win7. The start menu would look very familiar to win7 users in how it opens and displays menus. Simple and intuitive. You can get Linux Mint on a bootable USB stick, and if your machine will boot from a USB stick, you can boot to linux and run the full blown version while you can see how it's laid out and see if you like it.

If you shut down without clicking on the "Install Linux Mint" icon, the computer will go right back to how it was before you booted linux from the USB, and will not have any knowledge of it ever running linux, as it doesn't change anything or write anything to the hard drive.

If you want to send me a USB stick I will put Linux Mint on it and send it back, you boot to it and see how you like it.

[slim1836]

PM sent to DougGuy.

Slim

[rockshooter]

I started in the early 1970s working as a field engineer for Burroughs Corp. Repaired mechanical comptometers, then switched to L series computers in banks, paper tape, 80cc cards, then the fancy 96 cc, Bull punches, sorters, cassettes. When the Teton Dam broke in Idaho, I took PCBs home and washed them in my dishwasher. Time flies!
Loren

[Land Owner]

PM sent to DougGuy.

Slim

Which is why I favor this site...folks willing to help folks "get by".

[MaryB]

We had 80 line punch cards where I worked in the 70's, key punch operator was the best, never missed a stroke. Computer room was climate controlled and tape driven. Phone dial up and boxes of cards fed into the computer but if the phone link went down, the process started over. I hated those times, glad I was a cartographic draftsman.

I did take Basic Computer in college but hated it so I went a different way. Basic, Fortran, and Cobalt could kiss it in my book, I wanted the outdoors so I went with construction inspection.

Skip to today, My computer runs off Windows 7 and has been dying for years. I need another computer badly but they want to sell you a computer, then have you pay to update it yearly. Nope, not going to do that, it's like paying to rent programming. I'm not smart enough to understand all that's involved now a days. I just want a computer that works when I turn it on.

Same with printers, I have gone through several and each one has gone south. Same issues, the print looks like carp or does not print at all. Granted, I don't use it much, but when I need to, it doesn't work. Throw it out and get another and a year later, same issue. I have run the "clean heads" program until I'm blue in the face, cleaned the ink faces, but there is only so much I can do. I am printer-less as I type.

Same with internet service. I am wireless and have two extenders to help boost the signal, what a jumble of carp. I am offline more than on.

I hate techno stuff but most of us rely on them, wish I knew what to do. I just don't understand all this stuff, I'm just a simple man trying to make things work. Like Dillon stuff, buy once, but what to buy? I'll bet that others are in the same boat.

Slim

Laser printer, work on the same principal as a copy machine with toner. Don't print for a month? No problem! No heads to dry up and clog! I went laser 15 years ago and will never go back to inkjet junk. A black and white lase printer can be found for around $100, well worth it with the length of time a toner cartridge lasts and how long the printer can last. My current one is 6 years old!

[imashooter2]

Laser printer, work on the same principal as a copy machine with toner. Don't print for a month? No problem! No heads to dry up and clog! I went laser 15 years ago and will never go back to inkjet junk. A black and white lase printer can be found for around $100, well worth it with the length of time a toner cartridge lasts and how long the printer can last. My current one is 6 years old!

We bought one of the first home lasers. Cost twice as much as the PC we attached it to and then I had to buy an expansion card and RAM in order to print the graphics heavy papers my wife was producing. Details are lost in the mist of time… I believe it was a big pile of 4164 chips to expand the memory to a full 1Mb.

One thing I do remember was the month it took to get a single page out of a parallel port.

[blackthorn]

Yep laser printer is the way to go. I have one, can't recall how long I've had it (years) but it has been a long time. Toner cartridge lasts a long time, they advertise 3000 copies. When it finally began to put out lightly printed copy, I took the cartridge out and shook it up, put it back in and it is still printing clear black copies. This second go-round has been working for over a year. I went on line and ordered a two-fer at a good price and there they sit unused.

[MaryB]

We bought one of the first home lasers. Cost twice as much as the PC we attached it to and then I had to buy an expansion card and RAM in order to print the graphics heavy papers my wife was producing. Details are lost in the mist of time… I believe it was a big pile of 4164 chips to expand the memory to a full 1Mb.

One thing I do remember was the month it took to get a single page out of a parallel port.

I remember those... setting one up too half a day to get it to talk to the computer... but it beat fanfold paper for invoices! Place preprinted their logo on a couple hundred pages in advance then ran those back thru to print the invoice. Ran the graphics over the weekend, told it to print 200 copies, loaded in a ream of paper and left. Occasional jam but it was very rare. Wasted less paper than the dot matrix printer losing track of where it was on the page and printing the invoice in the wrong spot... looked very unprofessional and since this was a lawyers office they wanted it to look nice.

The guy who was selling them preprinted fanfold invoice blanks got very mad at me! I just shrugged and said "That is called catering to your customers needs and not your wallets needs! Selling them what they need makes for a repeat customer, selling them to pad your wallet makes for a temporary customer!" He never did listen to me and lost more accounts to me over the years...

[WRideout]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

When I joined the CA Army Guard in the early 80's, we still had the old RTTY (radioteletype) "Rat" rigs that were installed on their own truck. The codes that enabled secure communications were sent from higher hqs via perforated paper tape. These were very reliable and because the output was printed, it was a lot less likely to have a transcription error. They finally went the way of the dinosaur in the 90's.

Wayne

[firefly1957]

I know I am getting sick and tired of Microsoft next computer will be linux ...
I set up an old XP desktop this week to look for something it was not there .