SSD drives and data transfer

Weasel · 01-27-2013, 12:29 PM,

Thinking of buying my first SSD and I note they come with a data transfer kit so I can transfer my OS over to the drive. Has anyone tried this, and if so did it work? I have tried Windows backups before and they never worked, so I am a bit skeptical.

Lowlander · (This post was last modified: 01-29-2013, 06:02 AM by Lowlander.)

Not a computer geek, but I have a toshiba 500gb portable HD, so from memory ( excuse the pun ) you gotta make a back up on dvd of your operating system.
Although I seem to remember you can do this once only, to the portable HD, but don't quote me.

It's a good investment as I copy all my files each month, each week, or day if I'm farting around with mods etc.

Anyhow my old PC was on it's last legs when I bought mine, copied everything a few weeks before it died, but I had selected auto mode so eveything was encrypted !!!, could'nt figure out how to transfer this to my new PC de-crypted, that's when the shit hit the fan.

Luckly I managed to fire up the old bugger, spent the whole night manually drag'in and dropping all the files onto the portable HD dispite numerous CTD.

So with my new PC I just plug in the PHD and select Windows " Backup and Restore " all my files whenever I feel the need.

Sorry about the pre-amble just want you to avoid the snags which caused me big problems.

Weasel · 01-29-2013, 07:50 AM,

Thanks for the reply. I am hoping I can use Easus clone to copy my OS from my old HDD to my new SDD. I don't want to have to stuff it all onto dvds, will probably just format if it comes to that.

Lowlander · 02-07-2013, 07:21 AM,

Weasel, I'm glad you inquired about SSD drives, looks like l'll have to go and read all the small print, I had this preconceived misconception that as I modded files on my PC, then these newer files would be copied over to my SSD drive each time I backed up.
THIS IS NOT THE CASE, well at least the way in which I do the task.
So again I spent some time dragging dropping and replacing the files stored on my PHD.

Weasel · 02-07-2013, 07:51 AM,

I did a lot of reading on SSD and in the end I skipped it. Here is what I found out: they are fast to start off with, but as you put more and more stuff into them they slow down since they are just memory (a ram drive if you wish, but slower). Every time you read or write to an SSD it wears the drive down so that over the years they become slower and slower, although that would take a long time, around 5-8 years and by then new technology would come out. Reading PC reviews from tech giants they have stated that SSD drives, along with 3D tvs, are old hat and on the way out.

One thing I noticed is all those who owned SSD said the same thing, it makes windows start faster. Well that is nice, but I am not in such a hurry that I need windows to go from 90 seconds to 20 seconds. None of them say they use them for gaming and in deed the tech weenies suggest an SSD only for windows so you limit the IOPS going to it to preserve it. The big thing that got me was a guy did a test on his SSD, running a monitoring program, and within 1000 IOPS his drive had already slowed 35%.

So my EASEUS backup worked fine, and I was able to clone windows over to my new HD (WD BLACK, faster than normal HDs with a bigger buffer) but in the end I was unhappy as there were gliches, so I just nuked it. I did find running a 4gig ram drive really made windows and my apps fly, once windows is running. My CMBN game normally takes about 2 minutes to load a turn, but with the ramdrive (temp/tmp moved to it) it would take about 40 seconds. With my new HD drive it takes about 90 seconds. I am thinking of taking some of my 8gig on my 64 system and creating a new ram drive, the previous was on 32 bit. And despite what others say online, the ramdrive is faster than 64 bit stock.