Adelyn Wong Sheng Xuan MY961 201133

Upgrade your data storage

There are two good reasons to upgrade your hard disk drive. You may need more storage
capacity or you may wish to speed up your rig by switching from a mechanical drive to a
solid state drive (SSD).

CAN YOU UPGRADE?

If you can physically upgrade the storage on your computer,
then this is not usually a complicated thing to do and can be Once you are sure you can
carried out with few tools other than a screwdriver. While upgrade, find out which of
desk-top computers usually have plenty of slots for extra disk the technologies and formats
drives, some slim laptops or all-in-one tablets have no are compatible with your
provision for upgrading their storage. If the storage can be system.
upgraded, there may be provision for only certain size or format of new storage devices, for
example 2.5 inch bays or the latest M.2 format. This will restrict the type of storage that can be
installed.
WHICH DRIVE WORKS FOR YOU? SOLID STATE DRIVES
If you can upgrade, then you need to find out These are available in two formats; the
which sort of drive is compatible with your familiar 2.5 inch disk drive and the newer
machine. It is worth considering what sorts of M.2 format stick. The SATA connected drive
storage devices are available. Here are will fit in most desk-top computers, while the
some of the current sorts on the market: newer M.2 format requires a special slot to
be available. This format is becoming
 Mechanical hard drives
available in high-end and light-weight laptop
 Solid state drives
computers.
 SATA connected SSDs
 M.2 format SSDs The M.2 format is effectively a miniature
PCI-Express socket with a theoretical
MECHANICAL HARD DRIVES maximum bandwidth of 32 Gbits/second
These hard drives offer reliable performance compared with 6 Gbits/second for SATA
at reasonable prices per gigabyte. They are connected drives. M.2 format drives can hit
much slower than SSDs and provide much higher speeds than are possible over
economical solutions to large capacity SATA. Premium M.2 format drives using
secondary storage where speed is not at a NVMe technology can deliver close to four
premium. They are not recommended as the times the speed of a SATA drive.
main system disk where a smaller SSD will All M.2 have standard dimensions and SATA
improve boot up time and system drives are usually supplied as 2.5 inch
performance considerably. format. Just bear in mind that there are two
thicknesses of SATA drives – 7 mm or 9.5
mm. You may need to check on your laptop
computer whether it is limited to the thinner
size. The use of a spacer can pad the
thickness of a slimmer drive in a 9.5 mm
space.
CAPACITY OR SPEED?
The performance difference between an SSD and a mechanical drive is not only about data
transfer speed, but also on seek time. On a mechanical hard disk the head has to physically move
between different areas of the disk surface as it fetches bits of data for different programs or
processes. On an SSD all locations are instantly addressable so performance is fast, smooth and
responsive.
Type of Storage Benefits Disadvantages
Large capacity at relatively low Slow, not so good as system
Mechanical hard disk drive
price per GB drive

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Adelyn Wong Sheng Xuan MY961 201133
Fast with commonly available Quite expensive especially for
Solid state drive (SATA)
2.5 inch slots large capacity drives
Need specialised slot and
Solid state drive (M.2 format) Small but very fast
expensive
Cloud storage Unlimited storage Not under personal control
A large capacity (up to several terabytes) hard disk drive is economical if speed is not essential,
but economical storage is. Mechanical hard drives are available in both the larger 3.5 inch and the
2.5 inch size. For a primary drive SSD, a capacity of 256 GB or even better 512 GB would be ideal
and affordable. Similarly an M.2 format drive may be used as a primary (system) disk or as super-
fast secondary storage.
So far we have only talked about internal storage. Using an external disk drive to store your data is
also a possibility using any of the drive types discussed here. An advantage of this is that you have
portability of your data and can take it from one computer or location to another. You could also
choose to store your data on a server in the cloud and have it accessible from anywhere that you
can use an internet connection.
UPGRADING TO A NEW SYSTEM DISK
There are several options to transferring the contents of the old disk onto the new disk. One
method is to make a clean install using a version of the operating system on disk. This method will
remove all existing programs you have. These will need to be reinstalled after the new disk is
operating. An alternative method which will preserve your existing programs is to use cloning
software (often supplied with a new disk drive) and make an exact copy of the current disk. This
can be quite straightforward, but if the new disk is a smaller capacity than the one it is replacing
may involve you in deciding what to keep and what to leave out. A third route is to make a virtual
image of the source disk and copy it onto external media, then boot from a disk containing the
imaging software choosing which files to keep.
Good luck if you decide to upgrade your storage.