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Upgrade Your Data Storage

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33 views2 pages

Upgrade Your Data Storage

Uploaded by

omchopra99
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Om Chopra-IN788-017

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 computer, then
this is not usually a complicated thing to do and can be carried Once you are sure you can
out with few tools other than a screwdriver. While desk-top upgrade, find out which of the
computers usually have plenty of slots for extra disk drives, some technologies and formats are
slim laptops or all-in-one tablets have no provision for upgrading compatible with your system.
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? will fit in most desk-top computers, while the
newer M.2 format requires a special slot to
If you can upgrade, then you need to find out be available. This format is becoming
which sort of drive is compatible with your available in high-end and light-weight laptop
machine. It is worth considering what sorts of computers.
storage devices are available. Here are
some of the current sorts on the market: The M.2
format is
 Mechanical hard drives effectively
 Solid state drives a miniature
PCI-
 SATA connected SSDs Express
 M.2 format SSDs socket with a theoretical maximum
bandwidth of 32 Grits/second compared with
Mechanical Hard Drives 6 Grits/second for SATA connected drives.
M.2 format drives can hit much higher
These hard drives offer reliable performance
speeds than are possible over SATA.
at reasonable prices per gigabyte. They are
Premium M.2 format drives using NV Me
much slower than SSDs and provide
technology can deliver close to four times
economical solutions to large capacity
the speed of a SATA drive.
secondary storage where speed is not at a
premium. They are not recommended as the All M.2 have standard dimensions and SATA
main system disk where a smaller SSD will drives are usually supplied as 2.5-inch
improve boot up time and system format. Just bear in mind that there are two
performance considerably. thicknesses of SATA drives – 7 mm or 9.5
mm. You may need to check on your laptop
Solid State Drives computer whether it is limited to the thinner
These are available in two formats; the size. The use of a spacer can pad the
familiar 2.5-inch disk drive and the newer thickness of a slimmer drive in a 9.5 mm
M.2 format stick. The SATA connected drive space.
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 must 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.
Om Chopra-IN788-017

Type of Storage Benefits Disadvantages


Mechanical hard disk drive Large capacity at Slow, not so good as system
relatively low price drive
per GB
Solid state drive (SATA) Fast with commonly Quite expensive especially
available 2.5-inch for large capacity drives
slots
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 m.2alternative 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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