Installing an SSD to a desktop with 1 drive bay.

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OldGeek

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#193686 20-Mar-2016 15:51

I have a All-in-one that has one drive bay with a conventional HDD running Win 8.1. In an effort to eliminate poor performance I am experimenting by ultimately replacing the HDD with an SSD. This is a home-office PC running some accounting apps, used nights and weekends only.

I have seen some articles that discuss how SSD performance degrades because of write-cycle use. Is this historical or do current SSD offerings have a more limited hardware life than HDDs?

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#1516466 20-Mar-2016 16:41

Theoretical. The life of the SSD will outlast the heaviest user. Of course there are still failures, but so do spinning ones.

richms

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#1516469 20-Mar-2016 16:42

So long as you have AHCI and trim working, you will be fine. Heavy swap can cause the write amount to get higher, but the SSD's I have had die have been minimal use situations, certainly not hard constant heavy use like the OS drive in my gaming PC gets.

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timmmay

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#1516474 20-Mar-2016 16:48

Get a Samsung 850, pro is a bit longer life, but all should be fine for most people. Since they're so light and generate next to no heat if you have a spare SATA port you can duct tape it to anything you can find. Reinstall of the OS is generally best.

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#1516477 20-Mar-2016 16:56

timmmay:

Get a Samsung 850, pro is a bit longer life, but all should be fine for most people. Since they're so light and generate next to no heat if you have a spare SATA port you can duct tape it to anything you can find. Reinstall of the OS is generally best.

I have taped extra "system drive" SSDs into several older PCs - no problems with overheating, and a huge increase in real-world performance. The data stays on the slower HDD "data drive".

Just use double-sided adhesive foam tape.

EDIT: Alternatively you can buy adapters to fit TWO 2.5" drives into the old HDD drive bay.

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loceff13

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#1516479 20-Mar-2016 16:59

I can't be the only one that just lets the SSD hang midair on the power cable :D

hio77

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#1516482 20-Mar-2016 17:15

Ild just use the tape method if you want the drive to be secure. Remember, SSDs are flash memory so they can stand being banged around so shoving it anywhere isnt REALLY an issue

Both my SSDs are used just like harddrives, one runs my OS, Swapfile, some steam games Media creation etc.

My second SSD is predominately Scratch space and Steam games. I often spread the load between the Two to really push speed up.

Often i sit on 10~20GB swap, the move up to 24GB ram only really reduced this slightly (Although in use memory isnt sitting As high now!) so there's a reasonable amount of swapping hitting them.

Realistically, your unlikely to use up all the write cycles, Especially if your buying decent SSDs. I was mindful of it when i first got my drives, now ill write the whole thing over and over again daily without a care. Smart status is monitored and all files are iver non critical or backed up to the cloud.

loceff13:

I can't be the only one that just lets the SSD hang midair on the power cable :D

At one point, Both the HDD and SSD in my router were just dangling midair. All good ;)

I THINK i may have put it in a bay when i rebuilt my Media server.. although, i am sitting here looking at a 2.5" to 3.5" converter on my desk...

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richms

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#1516495 20-Mar-2016 17:24

I have 3 sitting behind the motherboard tray of my gaming PC, just enough gap between the tray and the other side panel. No worries of a direct hit to it stuffing it up like if a HDD was in direct contact with the exterior panel.

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#1516538 20-Mar-2016 18:00

loceff13:

I can't be the only one that just lets the SSD hang midair on the power cable :D

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Behodar

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#1516550 20-Mar-2016 18:30

loceff13: I can't be the only one that just lets the SSD hang midair on the power cable :D

I'll raise you one of those 3.5" server drives with the cooling mesh etc. on the front, dangling out the side of my desktop

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#1516558 20-Mar-2016 18:40

Behodar:

loceff13: I can't be the only one that just lets the SSD hang midair on the power cable :D

I'll raise you one of those 3.5" server drives with the cooling mesh etc. on the front, dangling out the side of my desktop

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OldGeek

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#1516623 20-Mar-2016 21:10

Thankx all. I will bung in the SSD in pace of the HDD and all should be sweet.

richms

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#1516651 20-Mar-2016 21:22

This thread got me motivated to change my 3 SSD array over from legacy to UEFI. Talk about an effort. None of the easy simple guides cover it at all.

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surfisup1000

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#1517277 21-Mar-2016 22:33

richms:

This thread got me motivated to change my 3 SSD array over from legacy to UEFI. Talk about an effort. None of the easy simple guides cover it at all.

i had a difficult enough time converting 1 ssd to UEFI.

What reasons for a 3 SSD array?

richms

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#1517321 22-Mar-2016 03:17

surfisup1000:

i had a difficult enough time converting 1 ssd to UEFI.

What reasons for a 3 SSD array?

More space on a single drive is easier than dealing with the space being split. I had 2 drives for steam stuff and one for the OS, but OS and apps was full and heaps of space on the steam drive, sick of moving things when editing video etc.

Make it all one array and space for whatever. When I first did it the partition table limit didnt occur to me so I spent ages moving stuff around to only gain a few 100 gigs over the 2 drive array.

Also, 3 drives is no faster than 2 in crystal disk mark really. 2 was much more than a single drive. Will have to see what the deal is at next upgrade time with the likes of nvme and speed and raiding them etc.

Richard rich.ms