• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.
Apr 30, 2016
3,530
3,666
51
Lincoln
I am interested in upgrading my new (old) machine to an SSD. From a little investigation, apparently I can't afford to. Not the 1Tb that I wanted at least. It made me think though, do I really need it for my gaping maw of data storage? How do most go about this?
I have a 3TB portable storage for the data, but this computer lacks a 3.0 USB and transfer times are slow. Price wise I'm right at about the 350-500Gb range depending on quality I suppose. Any suggestions?

Here's basically what I've got.

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03151850


Edit: I plan on dual booting from it. Should have mentioned that earlier. Probably going to be Win7 and Linux Mint Cinnamon. Idk might end up going with Win 10.
 
Last edited:
I'm kind of a hoarder in that aspect. I've got about 300 GB tied up in various ROMs and Isos. Backups for backups, media, etc. I'm constantly experimenting with my Android X86 project so I burn ALOT of .isos to USB. Through various stages. I guess that is my main concern. If I am burning these from an external location, will the integrity suffer? I think moving it to internal everytime sounds like a bit of a pain.
 
Upvote 0
Thanks, BIOS is upgraded. 12Gbs of RAM. Even though it is only supposed to handle 8. I'm right around that $100 mark. I just don't want a cheapie that will crap out in a year. Thanks for the recommendation.
I have also seen a secondary drive in place of the CD/DVD. Oh yeah it's an HP Pavillion G series Notebook. It was broken beyond repair. IE, needed a new hard drive. I've got a 350 hdd in there temporarily.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rootabaga
Upvote 0
@rootabaga
I do know you and I do trust your judgment. That's probably the biggest reason I started this. To get recommendations from all ya all. I don't trust the product reviews one bit. Looking back I probably worded that wrong. I meant thanks for the recommend. It's at the top of my list.
Sometimes my brain moves faster than my fingers can type.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: rootabaga
Upvote 0
What I did with my work laptop was replace the 1TB HDD with a 500GB SSD. I then bought a caddy (< $10) that allowed me to replace the DVD with the original HDD meaning I then had around 50% more storage than before - as well as an amazing performance boost as the O/S and other software were now on SSD. I toyed with idea of getting an external caddy for the DVD but in the end, didn't bother as I don't recall the last time I used the DVD drive on my work machine.

In order to maximise storage, I did need to back up the HDD files I wanted to keep to an external HDD so that I could reformat the HDD to get rid of the O/S etc before putting everything back.

The net result was I kept that laptop around a year longer than I would have done.

The whole process was relatively painless and worked so well that I did the same thing with my personal laptop.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AZgl1500 and Bg260
Upvote 0
What I did with my work laptop was replace the 1TB HDD with a 500GB SSD. I then bought a caddy (< $10) that allowed me to replace the DVD with the original HDD meaning I then had around 50% more storage than before - as well as an amazing performance boost as the O/S and other software were now on SSD. I toyed with idea of getting an external caddy for the DVD but in the end, didn't bother as I don't recall the last time I used the DVD drive on my work machine.

In order to maximise storage, I did need to back up the HDD files I wanted to keep to an external HDD so that I could reformat the HDD to get rid of the O/S etc before putting everything back.

The net result was I kept that laptop around a year longer than I would have done.

The whole process was relatively painless and worked so well that I did the same thing with my personal laptop.

Thanks,
That sounds like something I could definitely do. Is there a kit that can make the DVD easily swappable*? I have been known to experiment and have borked my machines a time or two. Occasionally, probably from fear and dismay, it seems I can only get boot from a DVD. It is kind of a comfort zone. I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to swap that back on the fly (in a panic). :D




*Apparently swappable is not a real word. It should be.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Is there a kit that can make the DVD easily swappable*?

Pass. I only looked for caddies that allowed me to replace the DVD drive. The caddie was only held in with a couple of small screws so switching the HDD and DVD only takes a minute or so - not something you'd want to do all the time but every once in a while it wouldn't be too much hassle.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bg260
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones