target2019
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Have you used Windows disk utility to check and repair disk?
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Personally, I wouldn't bother with a hybrid hard drive. You can buy a full SSD cheaper and it will be faster and more reliable than a hybrid drive. I switched to SSD's years ago and would never go back to standard drives. ....
my planned next configuration is with hd 1 = ssd 500 GB; HD 2= 2 tb conventional (or 4 if possible) I am a bit old school sticking with a desktop for some things
I've replaced HD's before but found it a PIA.
I can usually install/load and fully configure a new HD the way I want it in less than a day (5 to 6 hours). I've used cloning/ghosting software and even messed with disk arrays in the past. Pros and cons for each but to much trouble for me once I realized the only thing that is really important to me are my personal files. (That's why I just backup my personal files a few times year)I used to feel that way when I had to format a drive, reinstall Windows, reinstall all my applications, restore my backed up data (assuming I had a backup), and reconfigure all of my personal settings. That process could easily take a week or more, and I NEVER got things back to where I had them.
These days I just "clone" the old drive to the new one. Most cloning software can adapt your data to fit a larger or smaller drive, SSD or magnetic, etc. Plug the drives in, wait 30-90 minutes for the data to transfer, swap drives and you're done. Everything is just like you left it, except it's running on a new drive.
I first had that feeling after setting up my IBM XT with its 20 megabyte drive. Prior to that my only experience was with the 1 megabyte cartridges on an IBM 1130. They were 14" in diameter. The Seagate 5 1/4" XT drive was a marvel!... Now my drive space feels like a spacious mansion ...
I first had that feeling after setting up my IBM XT with its 20 megabyte drive. Prior to that my only experience was with the 1 megabyte cartridges on an IBM 1130. They were 14" in diameter. The Seagate 5 1/4" XT drive was a marvel!
Enjoy the feeling. It is transitory.
In case anyone missed it, I contacted an online PC repair shop and they diagnosed a failing hard drive. They could’ve charged me for the diagnosis or a “repair” but they did not. I did get some random mysterious system failure noticed at some point but blew them off. I will try some of the suggestions to diagnose the hard drive since I don’t have a screen shot from the repair session. Thanks again. Other priorities right now. I was able to backup the drive and create a boot disk using the Win10 utility.
I put life back into two older Sony Vaio laptops by installing 500 GB SATA SSDs for about $60 each (it may be cheaper now) from Micron (via Amazon). It came with Acronis to clone the drive (using a USB to SATA connector $8 on Ebay). This upgrade significantly improved performance.
If you want a new laptop, look for deals on Slickdeals.net. I picked up a ASUS gamer laptop last week with a 9th generation I7 processor, 16GB, two SSDs (500 GB each), GE Force GTX 1650 graphics, Full HD 15.6" monitor, and I have a spare bay to add a hard drive. It cost me $744 including tax. It sold out pretty fast. This laptop runs Windows 10 and boots up in less than 10 seconds. I removed all the Windows 10 and Microsoft bloatware and this laptop performs really nicely. I bought it for 4K video editing and needed the performance.
Very nice spec on the new Asus. Looks like fun!
Update:
The laptop performance continued to degrade and I was sufficiently unsure of my own skills so I resorted to The Geek Squad at Best Buy. They fixed it in about 2 hrs and I have their 1 yr support package for all our devices. It cost about $100 more than I was going to spend to fix it myself so I guess it qualifies for Blow That Dough. I got the SSD too.
Depending on the Brand of SSD you buy some (samsung) provide software you can download to clone your drive. Of course I worked in It for about 20 years so I understand this. In general youtube is of course a great place to find how to videos to do a lot of it related things. If of course following directions is a problem however....Update:
The laptop performance continued to degrade and I was sufficiently unsure of my own skills so I resorted to The Geek Squad at Best Buy. They fixed it in about 2 hrs and I have their 1 yr support package for all our devices. It cost about $100 more than I was going to spend to fix it myself so I guess it qualifies for Blow That Dough. I got the SSD too.
Just replaced the HD in my Mac mini with an SSD, wonderful improvement, not hard to do, got a cheap cable to transfer the data from the old HD.
I paid about $55 for 500 GB Sandisk SSD. I can’t tell any difference from the mechanical drive when it was working properly. The laptop now makes a grinding noise on startup. I’d be horrified if I did the work myself and had this problem. I had asked them to clone me drive before the replacement but I guess that’s not how they do it. They did backup the few bits of data I had on there.