SSD transformation.

[pmrid]

My “old” i3 Lappie was getting on my nerves. It seemed so slow to load and generally unresponsive. So I whipped out the old 2.5 inch HDD and replaced it with a 250GB SSD I had lying around. Just finished a new Win10 install and have started re-installing all the goodies I need for astro work. Already, the transformation is staggering. It has 16GB of RAM and it just races along. I can highly recommend this to anyone suffering with older tech.

[The_bluester]

I did a similar thing with an old laptop of mine a while back, the difference between a well aged hard disc and even a cheap SSD is pretty startling isn't it?

I actually did the same trick (Using the same SSD as my old laptops motherboard failed) to revive a friends machine and it was a similar performance boost there too, and that had a reasonably good HDD in it to start with.

[pmrid]

I guess the price for the transformation is that you have to backup more regularly. SSDs do fail and the so-called MTBF is not any kind of guarantee of longevity.

LATE EDIT: Here’s a stumbling block. I cannot get my Serial/USB connections to work. A TTL323 and FT323R - no drivers in Win10 and none I can find online. So I can’t use EQMOD or control my Moonlite focuser. Bummer. So I’ve reluctantly reinstalled my old HD until I can find a solution.

[PeterM]

I did a similar recently only I used Macrium Reflect free to clone the HDD to the SSD on my HP laptop and all seems to work fine. Overall it was fairly straightforward.

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

[OICURMT]

While this is true, depending on the SSD, the chances of it cratering are slim.

I've have over 20TB written to my Samgsung 850 EVO and it has yet to slice into the Over Provisioning Area. S.M.A.R.T. indicates 1 CRC error since I've installed the drive (over two years ago).

I've got a couple of WD Blue SSD's hanging around that I plan on adding under RAID0 to get better through-put for video editing... I've got them in old boxes which I'm about to junk.

Upgrading old hardware with SSD's is definately worth it... As for backups, I use RSYNC to my NAS server, which runs a series of WD Red NAS drives. Set up correctly, sleeping at night is easy :D... even when imaging :P

[ecuador]

Completely anecdotal of course, but from about a dozen of SSDs i've installed for myself and friends & family in the last 10 or so years, the only one that has failed was a Samsung 830. After about 3 years, with no warning, I stopped being able to access an area of the SSD (completely inaccessible even with dd). So I've switched to Crucial since :)
But, yeah, I've had more HDDs fail in the same timeframe than that one SSD... A backup is always needed, but I would not worry about SSDs more than I would about HDDs.