HD replacement

Post #403,221 by pwhysall 7/3/15 5:33:00 AM 7/3/15 5:37:11 AM Reply	HD replacement So the system disk in my PC is dicking around. The SMART utility is reporting that the device is replacing a lot of sectors, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the disk goes to sleep and doesn't wake up. If this was one of the two data disks in the box, that'd be bad. As the system disk, it means Windows eventually crashes and reboots. Only it doesn't reboot, because the disk has gone to sleep and won't wake up. A power cycle is required to get it going again. Obviously, this is an unsustainable situation and will eventually lead to trouble. Data loss is not a worry (yay CrashPlan!) but a box that doesn't work when I need to get a set of wedding shots out - that's a problem. So, I've got a Crucial MX200 500GB SSD to replace it. Later today, I will image my failing system disk onto it using the supplied Acronis True Image software. Wish me luck :) Note: the filesystem on the system disk is in good shape; I've taken to running disk checks on a daily basis :\ Edited by pwhysall July 3, 2015, 05:37:11 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #403,223 by drook 7/3/15 8:00:08 AM Reply	So you're doing photo gigs for commission now? -- Drew
Post #403,224 by pwhysall 7/3/15 8:54:55 AM Reply	Ar!
Post #403,231 by boxley 7/3/15 1:23:38 PM Reply	you have the eye for it Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #403,226 by Another Scott 7/3/15 10:30:53 AM Reply	Luck! I've not had a Crucial SSD fail on me yet, but I'm sure the day is coming. They make such a dramatic improvement in the system performance compared to a magnetic or "hybrid" disk that it really is astonishing. Best of luck with the wedding photography business, also too! Cheers, Scott.
Post #403,242 by Andrew Grygus 7/4/15 7:08:20 PM Reply	So much faster . . . until . . . . . they get to 75% full or get severely fragmented. Then they can get quite a bit less faster.
Post #403,243 by pwhysall 7/5/15 2:08:02 AM Reply	Fragmented? 75% full? Do tell.
Post #403,247 by Andrew Grygus 7/5/15 11:36:19 AM Reply	Re: Fragmented? 75% full? These things can only write blocks, and when they run out of free blocks they go to another mode. They find a block with free pages and read that block into cache (reads are faster than writes). They then erase the block (erase is veeeery slow compared to read or write), add the new data to the cache, and then write cache back to the block. Of course, a disk with a lot of free time will not be so much affected as there is more time for garbage collection. TRIM helps, but is imperfect.
Post #403,234 by scoenye 7/3/15 8:16:01 PM Reply	On the risk of being redundant That check included scanning for bad sectors? If not, all you can be certain of is that the file system structure is intact. There may be holes lurking in obscure parts of Windows or your applications. Honestly, I would do a fresh install in a case like this.
Post #403,237 by pwhysall 7/4/15 12:17:00 AM Reply	Yep All done now. Didn't even have to make a bootable device. It was really easy. And now it's just so fast. [reboots computer over and over just cuz]

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