Scribd
Upload
12 views2 pages

UPGRADE

Upgrading your hard disk drive can enhance storage capacity or speed, with options including mechanical hard drives, solid state drives (SSDs), and cloud storage. Compatibility with your system is crucial, as some devices may only support specific formats like 2.5 inch or M.2 drives. When transferring data to a new disk, you can choose between clean installs, cloning software, or creating a virtual image, depending on whether you want to preserve existing programs.

Uploaded by

yaraabdelmajid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
12 views2 pages

UPGRADE

Upgrading your hard disk drive can enhance storage capacity or speed, with options including mechanical hard drives, solid state drives (SSDs), and cloud storage. Compatibility with your system is crucial, as some devices may only support specific formats like 2.5 inch or M.2 drives. When transferring data to a new disk, you can choose between clean installs, cloning software, or creating a virtual image, depending on whether you want to preserve existing programs.

Uploaded by

yaraabdelmajid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Yasmin Ahmed Avinash Academy 123

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?

Once you are sure you can


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

page 1 of 3
Type of Storage Benefits Disadvantages
Mechanical hard disk drive Large capacity at relatively low Slow, not so good as system
price per GB drive
Yasmin Ahmed
Solid state drive (SATA) Avinash
Fast Academy
with commonly available 2.5 Quite expensive especially 123
inch slots for large capacity drives
Solid state drive (M.2 format) Small but very fast Need specialised slot and
expensive
Cloud storage Unlimited storage Not under personal control

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 has to physically move
between different areas of the disk surface as it fetches bits of data for different programs or
processes. Onan SSD all locations are instantly addressable so performance is fast, smooth and
responsive

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 alternative 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.

page 2 of 3

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy