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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 Once you are sure you can
computer, then this is not usually a complicated thing to upgrade, find out which of the
do and can be carried out with few tools other than a technologies and formats are
screwdriver. While desk-top computers usually have compatible with your system.
plenty of slots for extra disk drives, some slim laptops
or all-in-one tablets have no provision for upgrading
their storage. If the storage can be 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? Gbits/second compared with 6 Gbits/second
for SATA connected drives. M.2 format
If you can upgrade, then you need to find out drives can hit much higher speeds than are
which sort of drive is compatible with your possible over SATA. Premium M.2 format
machine. It is worth considering what sorts of drives using NVMe technology can deliver
storage devices are available. Here are close to four times the speed of a SATA
some of the current sorts on the market: drive.
 Mechanical hard drives All M.2 have standard dimensions and SATA
 Solid state drives drives are usually supplied as 2.5 inch
 SATA connected SSDs format. Just bear in mind that there are two
 M.2 format SSDs thicknesses of SATA drives – 7 mm or 9.5
MECHANICAL HARD DRIVES mm. You may need to check on your laptop
computer whether it is limited to the thinner
These hard drives offer reliable performance size. The use of a spacer can pad the
at reasonable prices per gigabyte. They are thickness of a slimmer drive in a 9.5 mm
much slower than SSDs and provide space.
economical solutions to large capacity
secondary storage where speed is not at a
premium. They are not recommended as the
main system disk where a smaller SSD will
improve boot up time and system
performance considerably.
SOLID STATE DRIVES
These are available in two formats; the
familiar 2.5 inch disk drive and the newer
M.2 format stick. The SATA connected drive
will fit in most desk-top computers, while the
newer M.2 format requires a special slot to
be available. This format is becoming
available in high-end and light-weight laptop
computers.
The M.2 format is
effectively a
miniature PCI-
Express socket
with a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 32

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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

Mechanical hard disk drive Large capacity at relatively Slow, not so good as system
low price per GB drive
Solid state drive (SATA) Fast with commonly available Quite expensive especially
2.5 inch slots for large capacity drives
Solid state drive (M.2 format) Small but very fast Need specialised slot and
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.

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