New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

[sam_sam_sam]

I should have done this a long time-a-go

Samsung SSD 500G bite hard drive for $90.00 price is a little higher

For the same money I could have got a 1T bite regular hard drive

I installed Windows 10 Pro

[dragos2009]

boot time should be max 15 seconds from push power botton to windows login screen/ desktop if no password used but the cpu needs to be decently fast aswell aka atleast 3000 points on passmark cpu benchmark

[Uranium-235]

oh yeah. I've pushed most of my customers to SSD's. Ram/CPU is usually no longer the bottleneck

make sure you have the right AHCI drivers (instead of windows default) installed for your chipset, to get the maximum speed

[Topcat]

I wouldn't even dream of selling a laptop with a spinning HDD in it....

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by Topcat

I wouldn't even dream of selling a laptop with a spinning HDD in it....

I agree! But, have been wondering if the limited amount of writes on TLC and MLC SSDs will come to bite us.

I wouldn't get anything less than an MX500 for Crucial SSDs and for Samsung, I would recommend at least an 860 Evo. (if SATA)

Looks like NVMe all the way! Probably at least a 970 Evo Plus, if getting a Samsung. Unless you can find others with a better-bang-for-the-buck.

I have a 250 GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus that I haven't even opened the box of yet...

[piernov]

HDD are way more prone to dying that SSD in laptops due to drop damage and overall mechanical stress. They also start getting less reliable after a few dozen thousands hours and that's not measurable. For SSD you can estimate it with the target write cycles of the technology used and the amount of data written since the SSD is in production. They still both do die randomly though.

Most people put low writing stress on their SSD so they'll probably discard the machine before the SSD has reached its max write cycles. People that put a higher stress on it will probably discard the machine or the SSD earlier. If the SSD is always used when full though it starts becoming an issue, the spare blocks is still pretty low compared to the total capacity of the SSD so you'll wear out some cells faster.
It's more of an issue when buying second hand or refurbishing PC, but then again it is already a problem with HDD.

[ratdude747]

Most of my laptops still have HDDs... but my main use ones (including the tablet I'm posting from) are solid state. It's partially a cost issue (compared to other uses of toy money) and partially laziness. A lot of them are dual booted (Arch x64, 7 x64, and one triple booted with XP too) and I foresee such a move being a bit of a pain. Maybe not, but only a couple are still in anything remotely active use, so why bother?

[Curious.George]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

Most of my laptops still have HDDs... but my main use ones (including the tablet I'm posting from) are solid state. It's partially a cost issue (compared to other uses of toy money) and partially laziness. A lot of them are dual booted (Arch x64, 7 x64, and one triple booted with XP too) and I foresee such a move being a bit of a pain. Maybe not, but only a couple are still in anything remotely active use, so why bother?

All spinning rust, here. Most drives need to be pretty big, to address my needs. And, getting enough RAM to avoid paging is too costly.

And, my "frequent use" laptops are set up to essentially "reinstall" the previous disk image on each boot (use external drives for persistent storage). So, every "in use" sector gets rewritten every time the machine is booted. SSDs tend to fall off a cliff when they fail while rust is a more graceful degradation.

[We'll use a similar approach for the laptop giveaway program... spinning rust is cheap!]

[clearchris]

I would retire spinning platter HDD after two years of use, especially in laptops. Two years old, time to upgrade before it died. I have had SSDs running for longer, not a single failure, yet. Though I admit, I still rotate them after two years, they go out of my laptop and my kids get an upgrade on their machine. And I only buy name brand SSD. Samsung, Crucial, Intel, Kingston, maybe SanDisk. Samsung EVO SSD have been good to me so far.

[Uranium-235]

I have a 970 pro 512gb for OS and 970 evo 1tb for games with 16gb of ram, even though it's a fairly old cpu, but top of the line for the series (6700k @ 4.4)

it's so fast loading it's not even funny (of course UEFI helps boot time). On a full w10 restart it's like the initial spinnys there for 4 seconds, but hard to say 'to desktop' cause it's passworded

[dmill89]

I learned that years ago. An SSD upgrade is my number one recommendation for people complaining their older but not "ancient" (later gen Core2Duo or newer) laptop is "too slow" (of course RAM too if they have less than 4GB).


Personally aside from some "retro" systems all of my laptops are running SSDs as is my main desktop (at least as a boot drive, it does have a secondary HDD for storage), other desktops are running either SSDs or velociraptors for boot drives.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Welp, even before the newfangled coronavirus, I failed to find any Samsung Pro SSDs. Even before the newfangled coronavirus, I probably was required to purchase online...

Might as well purchase a Samsung Pro SSD during covid-19!

[clearchris]

dmill: For sure! SSD has extended the useful life of all my hardware by a long way. Windows says my current laptop is
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU M 640 @ 2.80GHz, 2800 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
with 8g ram, and it works great for me. Unless I'm doing those android rom builds, then they take what seems like forever, but I really should have a server doing that...
This laptop is at least 5-6 years old, maybe more since I bought it used...

[Curious.George]

Originally Posted by clearchris

I would retire spinning platter HDD after two years of use, especially in laptops. Two years old, time to upgrade before it died. I have had SSDs running for longer, not a single failure, yet. Though I admit, I still rotate them after two years, they go out of my laptop and my kids get an upgrade on their machine. And I only buy name brand SSD. Samsung, Crucial, Intel, Kingston, maybe SanDisk. Samsung EVO SSD have been good to me so far.

I've had exactly two disks fail in 40 years. One a laptop drive that I was using in a 24/7/365 application that kept wanting to spin down -- and the OS would promptly spin it back up every 15 minutes (for cron jobs). The other a desktop drive that developed a problem with its boot sector.

As to "time to boot", my machines hibernate so they're up-and-running in maybe 3 seconds from when I tap a key on the keyboard...

[Note that I probably have close to 200T of spinning rust -- though most of that is offline (only 3-4T in most of my machines; laptops 500G-1T)]

[Dan81]

I personally just dropped an ADATA SU650 120GB + HGST Z7K500 500GB in my Aspire 8930G and have been happy with it. Yes, I shouldn't have a rust spinner in it, but hey, for the price I paid for that Z7K500 ($11), I can't complain.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by Dan81

I personally just dropped an ADATA SU650 120GB + HGST Z7K500 500GB in my Aspire 8930G and have been happy with it. Yes, I shouldn't have a rust spinner in it, but hey, for the price I paid for that Z7K500 ($11), I can't complain.

I'm assuming it was used for $11.....but that said, it's amazing how cheap SSD's have become....

[clearchris]

Curious.George: You are fortunate. I have had over 10 spinning platter drives fail over the past 25 years. Thankfully, I was able to get the data off nearly all of them using the ice-pack trick. Also, most of the laptop drives make terrible noises before they completely fail.

I'd rather not deal with having to turn off a machine until the replacement drive arrives, etc.

[Curious.George]

Originally Posted by clearchris

Curious.George: You are fortunate. I have had over 10 spinning platter drives fail over the past 25 years. Thankfully, I was able to get the data off nearly all of them using the ice-pack trick.

I've heard horror stories and (touch wood!) have wondered why so many other folks have had problems that I've not.

I'm almost convinced that the machine that had "boot sector" problems may actually have been PEBKaC -- I may have had an external drive plugged in when I was trying to boot and my boot order is usually set to try external drives before internal. So, the "boot problem" may have been curable by simply removing the external drive! <frown>

I had another episode ~35 years ago with a (SCSI) drive that "crashed". But, quickly realized that the problem was an OS upgrade when the (identical) backup drive ALSO crashed! So, I can't count those as media failures (as both drive were recoverable from WORM backup).

Also, most of the laptop drives make terrible noises before they completely fail.

Yes, that was how I eventually realized what had happened.

I have always had a machine, here, that runs 24/7/365 to provide "core network services" -- DNS, TFTP, NTP, SMTP, etc. Some years ago (when machines were still "large" and the only way to trim them down was to elimiate the keyboard and monitor and hide them under a dresser), I set on the idea of using a laptop for this role (!). It was small, thin (low profile), had a "monitor" built in -- along with a keyboard, etc.

What I hadn't considered was the effect of spinning up and down every 15 minutes would do to the disk over the course of years!

Note that the services running on the machine could continue to run (no paging needed) -- just nothing that had to go to/from the media (those processes would obviously hang).

So, from my other machines/workstations, all seemed well. Until I happened to be close to the laptop, one day, and heard this sick clanking... <frown>

I'd rather not deal with having to turn off a machine until the replacement drive arrives, etc.

I have lots of spare drives on hand.

But, my "workstation" is spread out over several machines (each machine having the I/Os and software necessary for a particular type of activity/task). So, I only lose some particular subset of capabilities when a machine is being serviced.

E.g., I'll be moving one of my workstations to another machine with more memory and second CPU. So, it will need to be backed up (just in case). And, while that is happening, I'll switch to some other activity that can run on one of the remaining workstations.

[My machines are my livelihood so down time has a cost associated with it. That realization makes it easier to set aside re$ource$ to minimize downtime! E.g., I have a collection of spare monitors, keyboards, mice, memory, disks -- even MACHINES -- that I can put into use in minutes so "what I'm working on" isn't interrupted: "I'll fix it later!"]

note there's a second "row" of monitors behind the first depicted, here... (shitty photographer! :> )

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by Topcat

I'm assuming it was used for $11.....but that said, it's amazing how cheap SSD's have become....

Lightly used, came from some Lenovo, judging by the IBM FRU and the datecode of 2015. The guy I bought from was actually the same guy I got a 1TB drive from for one of my Aspire 6930G laptops (I have two, one w/ HD4650 and one with 9600M GT, the one in question was the 9600M) and he has two more of these 7200RPM laptop drives at the same price.

The SSD was $30 though, as it was brand new bought from a romanian retailer (Altex) in box and everything. I had it in my PC but never got around using it, and thought I'd rather stick it in a laptop that deserves it. My 8930G should also get a new CPU upgrade hopefully, and maybe a GT240M once I can track down one.

I also have a lot more laptops coming through to fix up/upgrade for myself - an Acer 6920 with the infamous NEC/TOKIN issue, a 7738G with desperate need of parts (LCD,RAM, HDD and possibly battery too) and a near pristine 5739G. All TUBA models

[clearchris]

CG: Yeah, the noises are fun. Worst I ever heard was a lound boing noise, like a spring popping or something. I immediately shut down and got a new disk on order.

I do like keeping spares, except for drives. You wait a year, and you get a much bigger disk. So it becomes an upgrade too.

Actually, I wasn't even including my really old stuff bought from the recycler. I bought a stack of HP Proliant servers by the pound. Came out to somewhere around $25 each. Those I ran raid 0 on because I didn't trust them at all and had spares from some other unused servers. They didn't owe me anything though, they were 5.25 scsi 40G drives.