Upgrading To Solid State Drives And Backup Drives
With Solid State Drive (SSD) devices becoming more prevalent as system hard drives, it may be tempting to take advantage of the performance these devices offer. The process is fairly easy with the right set of tools.
To upgrade the hard disk drive in your computer with an SSD device, follow these basic steps.
- Backup the current hard disk drive
- Replace the system hard disk drive with an SSD device
- Restore from an image backup to the SSD device
1. Backup The System Hard Disk Drive
First, backup your system hard disk drive with a product that performs full system recovery, such as Rebit products. Not only does this preserve the current condition of the system hard drive, it ensures continuity of reliable backups.
2. Replace The Drive With An SSD Drive
To ensure compatibility, it is necessary to determine the type of hard disk drive currently in use. For example, desktops produced in the past few years typically have SATA hard drive bus technology. This is different than an older desktop, which might have IDE hard drive bus technology. Also, a laptop will have a 2.5″ hard drive, while a desktop typically has a 3.5″ hard drive.
Most importantly, obtain a SSD device with sufficient capacity. This typically requires a SSD device with equal or greater capacity to the device being replaced, as measured in gigabytes (GB).
3. Restore from your image backup to the SSD drive
With the SSD device installed, proceed to the full system recovery process. Generally, this involves starting the computer from a recovery CD-ROM and following the appropriate steps to recover the data from the backup storage to the system hard disk drive.
Backup SSD Drives
While it may seem that solving the reliability issue with the SSD devices reduces the need for backing up, this is not the case. The SSD device is still as susceptible to virus attacks, failed software and Windows updates, and power failures as a normal hard disk drive. Maintaining reliable backups of your Windows computer is essential even with the SSD.
Reasons to Upgrade Hard Drives With An SSD Drive
The SSD devices tolerate vibration and shock and are wonderfully fast, especially during the Windows startup phase. They are great for applications where dust, shock, and abuse are likely to occur, such as a battlefield. For the more casual user, such as road warriors, they offer a nearly instantaneous start and consume less than half the power of a normal rotating hard disk drive when idle and only slightly more than that when active.
At the core of the SSD device is a solid state transistor flash memory cell, and these memory cells can be accessed much like a Random Access Memory (RAM) device. The memory cell may be read in an unlimited fashion, but there is a limitation when writing or changing the memory cell. Early attempts at SSD devices resulted in unacceptable reliability. For this reason, the SSD manufacturers have been improving algorithms that allow the SSD to automatically relocate memory locations to balance the number of write cycles across the billions of memory cells. Because of these algorithms, the useful life of the SSD has been extended to acceptable durations.
A recent addition to the SSD line of products is a hybrid hard disk drive. Early reports are encouraging, as these hybrid drives combine the storage capacity of rotating hard disk drives with the high speed of SSD devices. Upgrading to a hybrid drive is essentially the same as upgrading to a SSD device. As costs have been steadily decreasing, and reliability steadily increasing, there has never been a better time to upgrade to SSD.
At Rebit, http://rebit.com, Dennis and two co-founders created something referred to as “ridiculously simple backup”. Rebit products are ideal for small business, relieving the burden of backup for IT providers and PC users. The Rebit SaveMe product is the only backup and recovery solution that starts working the minute it is installed, keeping PCs continuously protected from crashes, viruses or accidental file deletions. All Rebit products are continuous, complete, and easy to use. There are no buttons, no schedules, and no configurations. In the event of a catastrophe, one can easily and quickly recover individual files, entire folders, or restore the complete system to a point in time. For more information: http://rebit.com/products/product-comparison/.
