[NA]SSDs, HDDs[NA]

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Dave Taylor
1. I was shopping for a laptop and cannot find hybrid drives; it's either SSD or HDD. Is that the way it is now? Seems like 'hybrid drives' were common 5 yrs ago when I was shopping.

2. Is an SSD laptop going to run cooler than an HDD laptop?

3. Is changing out a laptop HDD for an SSD easy/difficult/not possible?
How about going from a 500GB SSD to a 2TB SSD?
How to determine compatibility?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...re=laptop_hybrid_drive-_-22-179-110-_-Product
 
SSD drives will run cooler than a HDD, but the main advantage is that it has no moving parts (no hard drive crashing) and it is lighter.

The form factor is the same as most 2.5” laptop drives (usually all SATA now) so changing them is no big deal. Just make sure to clone your existing drive to the new drive. (And external enclosure will help that.)

You can go to a larger SSD drive (more expensive) but unless you really need all that space, consider going with a 500MB or 1GB SSD drive and using cloud storage (like Google Drive or iCloud). That will free a lot of space on your drive.
 
SSDs should run cooler and use less power than a normal HDD. They also are a LOT faster which will improve the overall performance of the laptop and handle being dropped a lot better.

Anything modern is going to be a SATA drive and anything in a laptop is going to be 2.5" so essentially they're all compatible at this time.

Changing it out is usually fairly easy, it depends on the laptop. Normally there's a cover on the bottom that lets you access it and 2-4 small screws to remove the actual drive. You might want to look up your particular laptop to see where it is... there are a few out there that are really difficult.
 
1. Hybrids were popular for a very short time. They never did anything very well, and were mostly a gimick when flash memory was super expensive. SSDs are cheap now.
2. usually.
3. Very rare they aren’t just a drop in replacement. If you’re concerned about it, google search a phrase like “replacing hard drive with SSD” and your exact model number. Someone has surely done it on your model if it’s a few years old. Quite likely a similar search on YouTube will have a video of the process. As far as size compatibility goes, also very rare any size up to 2TB won’t work in anything modern if the laptop has standard SATA connectors inside for the spinny disk.
 
cowman said:
Anything modern is going to be a SATA drive and anything in a laptop is going to be 2.5"
Click to expand...

Or M.2...

A SATA SSD can either be 2.5” or M.2. If this is a drop-in replacement for a HHD make sure the SSD drive you buy says 2.5” - don’t just look for “SATA” in the description.

Of course if your laptop supports M.2 then you can also just go with M.2. They’re starting to become cheaper than 2.5”. There’s no performance difference between 2.5” SATA and M.2 SATA - go with whatever is cheaper/easier for you. (There’s of course a BIG performance difference between M.2 SATA and M.2 PCIe - but at this point M.2 PCIe is very very expensive.)
 
deonb said:
Or M.2...

A SATA SSD can either be 2.5” or M.2. If this is a drop-in replacement for a HHD make sure the SSD drive you buy says 2.5” - don’t just look for “SATA” in the description.

Of course if your laptop supports M.2 then you can also just go with M.2. They’re starting to become cheaper than 2.5”. There’s no performance difference between 2.5” SATA and M.2 SATA - go with whatever is cheaper/easier for you. (There’s of course a BIG performance difference between M.2 SATA and M.2 PCIe - but at this point M.2 PCIe is very very expensive.)
Click to expand...

Good point. I think a while back he mentioned the model number of this laptop and I don’t recall it having M.2.

But yeah ... he needs to buy whatever connector the laptop has.
 
The reason I ask about swapping drives is I see a lot of laptops I like with 500gb hdds but none I like with 2tb ssds so I was thinking I'd buy the laptop I want, buy and put in the SSD.

Surprised we can clone drives and use them; whatever happened to the Genuine Windows checking thingy?
 
deonb said:
Or M.2...

A SATA SSD can either be 2.5” or M.2. If this is a drop-in replacement for a HHD make sure the SSD drive you buy says 2.5” - don’t just look for “SATA” in the description.

Of course if your laptop supports M.2 then you can also just go with M.2. They’re starting to become cheaper than 2.5”. There’s no performance difference between 2.5” SATA and M.2 SATA - go with whatever is cheaper/easier for you. (There’s of course a BIG performance difference between M.2 SATA and M.2 PCIe - but at this point M.2 PCIe is very very expensive.)
Click to expand...

I feel the need. The need for PCIe!
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
The reason I ask about swapping drives is I see a lot of laptops I like with 500gb hdds but none I like with 2tb ssds so I was thinking I'd buy the laptop I want, buy and put in the SSD.

Surprised we can clone drives and use them; whatever happened to the Genuine Windows checking thingy?
Click to expand...

The algorithm allows for a certain number of changes. After some period of time (I forget how long), the changed system becomes the baseline, so more changes can be made.

It's actually pretty rare to require reactivation. Generally you'd either have to replace the mobo, or do a whole bunch of other upgrades at the same time. On my Win10 computer, I've upgraded the HDD to an SSD, made the original HDD a second drive that I use as a clone, upgraded the processor, and quadrupled the RAM. I had no problems whatsoever.

Rich
 
I replaced my no-longer-booting 500GB HD with a 500GB SSD. The difference is impressive. It was worth the relatively small premium for the SSD. I support a server at a buddy's auto repair shop -- Linux, with two Windows VMs to run his shop software. Now he has a nightly complete point-in-time backup of his "server" (a Windows VM) on a FLASH drive. It's getting old, though; it running CentOS from 2004. When we upgrade, I"m going to replace his spinning drives with a pair of SSDs. One for the OS, one for the VMs. That will stretch the life of his system another few years.
 
I think you'd be happy with either. However, I think you'd be happier with the hybrid if you need the space and happier with the SSD if you don't.

Keep in mind that conventional wisdom says you shouldn't keep an SSD above ~50% capacity for extended periods for various reasons.
 
The only problem with an SSD, vs. spinning media, is that if it dies you had better have a backup for your data as there is no way to recover data from a dead SSD. Spinning media allows for a potential to recover the data. Other than that, it sure is faster.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Would I be unhappy with the hybrid, or is it incompatible with most new laptops?
Click to expand...

The last hybrid I tried, only increased performance marginally. Maybe 20% if the data it was reading or writing was small. Which meant it really only sped up the laptop about 10-15%.

Full SSD is the game changer, it speeds things up a lot more than 10%, and it does it all the time.
 
denverpilot said:
The last hybrid I tried, only increased performance marginally. Maybe 20% if the data it was reading or writing was small. Which meant it really only sped up the laptop about 10-15%.

Full SSD is the game changer, it speeds things up a lot more than 10%, and it does it all the time.
Click to expand...

Amen to that. I had a laptop die on me a number of years ago while still working for Intel. The service guys were simply going to move my harddrive from the failed laptop to a new one, but when it was installed the screw was cross threaded and they couldn't get it out. So they built a new machine for me. New OS (Windows 7 instead of XP IIRC) and an SSD, rather than HDD. Same laptop, otherwise. I went from something like 5 minutes from hitting the power button to Outlook up and running to 1 minute. I doubt that the OS change had much to do with it. The SSD was dramatically faster.
 
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