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Started By
Message
New 2.5" (backup) HDD/SSD for laptop...
Posted on 9/23/25 at 9:51 am
Posted on 9/23/25 at 9:51 am
Many moons ago, when I bought my laptop it came with a 1 TB hdd (5400 rpm) that I promptly "replaced' with a 1TB NVME. When I added the NVME, I left the original hdd in as a "backup" or working drive. Now that I'm shooting photos and editing video for the kids MTB team, that 2nd drive is quickly filling up. I'd like to replace it with a 2tb drive.
Shopping around, the best deal(s) I've found are actually on portable HDD's. I'm I crazy thinking that I should just buy one of those, split open the case and drop the encased 2.5" drive into my laptop?
Thx in advance..
Shopping around, the best deal(s) I've found are actually on portable HDD's. I'm I crazy thinking that I should just buy one of those, split open the case and drop the encased 2.5" drive into my laptop?
Thx in advance..
3
Posted on 9/23/25 at 12:16 pm to Lonnie Utah
quote:
I'm I crazy thinking that I should just buy one of those, split open the case and drop the encased 2.5" drive into my laptop?
Why not keep it portable? I have a hard time buying spinning disk drives over SSDs if it's under 8tb (for internal use).
This post was edited on 9/23/25 at 1:41 pm
Posted on 9/23/25 at 12:17 pm to bluebarracuda
quote:
Why not keep it portable?
With my ADD, I'd lose/misplace it.
Posted on 9/23/25 at 12:55 pm to Lonnie Utah
You're not crazy at all, I've done it repeatedly using cases like this for under $15. But remember, spinning disks are going to fail, so you better be backing up somewhere (Backblaze, etc.)
Posted on 9/23/25 at 1:38 pm to Lonnie Utah
quote:
With my ADD, I'd lose/misplace it.
Is this a backup drive or an operating drive? If the former, your "backup" shouldn't be in a device that can be lost/stolen/destroyed. If the latter, that will be a staggeringly slow operating drive.
Posted on 9/23/25 at 1:49 pm to Joshjrn
It's an "operating" Internal drive that is secondary to the main boot drive. I try to keep as much ancillary stuff off the boot drive as possible. So my internal E:\ drive gets all of my data files.
This post was edited on 9/23/25 at 1:52 pm
Posted on 9/23/25 at 1:52 pm to Lonnie Utah
quote:
It's an operating drive that is secondary to the main boot drive. I try to keep as much ancillary stuff off the boot drive as possible.
I assume you don't have two PCIe connections to add another NVME, but unless you're incredibly price sensitive, why not just upgrade to a larger NVME? I guess as long as you aren't moving things around a ton, you could survive on an SSD, but I wouldn't find it pleasant for dealing with large files.
And outside of massive stationary archival needs, spinning rust needs to die.
Posted on 9/23/25 at 1:53 pm to Joshjrn
quote:
I assume you don't have two PCIe connections to add another NVME,
I don't.
quote:
why not just upgrade to a larger NVME?
Mainly the hassle factor of cloning a boot drive vs a data only drive.
ETA: The largest files I deal with are 30ish MB raw image files out of my camera.
This post was edited on 9/23/25 at 1:55 pm
Posted on 9/23/25 at 1:56 pm to Lonnie Utah
quote:
Mainly the hassle factor of cloning a boot drive vs a data only drive.
ETA: The largest files I deal with are 30ish MB raw image files out of my camera.
Ok, that's not terrible. I would definitely suggest an SSD over an HDD, though. Painfully slow speeds aside, moving from HDD to SSD is a huge reason why laptops are vastly more reliable than they used to be. Jostling around a component with tiny moving parts isn't great for longevity.
Posted on 9/23/25 at 11:44 pm to Lonnie Utah
Posted on 9/24/25 at 7:31 am to LemmyLives
quote:
But you can
Those would be awesome, If I had a desktop.
Posted on 9/24/25 at 11:23 am to Lonnie Utah
Posted on 9/24/25 at 12:51 pm to SaintEB
Ordered a new 2TB 2.5" SSD this AM. Thanks everyone.
Posted on 9/24/25 at 6:34 pm to Lonnie Utah
quote:
Ordered a new 2TB 2.5" SSD this AM. Thanks everyone.
If you have important data on the 1TB HDD that is currently installed, get the device that LemmyLives linked, put it in there and now you have a portable HDD.
Posted on 9/24/25 at 6:37 pm to SaintEB
quote:
get the device that LemmyLives linked
Already have a similar one...
Posted on 9/24/25 at 8:50 pm to Lonnie Utah
If you don't understand how cheap encrypted private key cloud storage can be, I think my storage of close to 1TB of data (in essentially glacial storage) is under a dollar a month. The standard is $6 a month per ETA: per TB not per GB), and it can direct connect to your NAS (which I know you don't have).
I'm the dork that had a tape backup drive in undergrad, but I did dumb shite like formatting the tapes before using, which meant they couldn't store data and all my backups were useless, because they never happened.(They weren't LTO, but something smaller that I don't recall.) ETA: they were TR-1 tapes. Yes, I put a tape drive in my tower. It was the days of 3.5 floppies, different times.
Replicating to OneDrive or similar can be super cheap if you're not concerned about security, but put it somewhere else once a month.
I'm the dork that had a tape backup drive in undergrad, but I did dumb shite like formatting the tapes before using, which meant they couldn't store data and all my backups were useless, because they never happened.(They weren't LTO, but something smaller that I don't recall.) ETA: they were TR-1 tapes. Yes, I put a tape drive in my tower. It was the days of 3.5 floppies, different times.
Replicating to OneDrive or similar can be super cheap if you're not concerned about security, but put it somewhere else once a month.
This post was edited on 9/24/25 at 10:04 pm
Posted on 9/24/25 at 10:11 pm to Lonnie Utah
Maybe time for new laptop or a gently used one? I put together a Latitude 5430 (1235u iris Xe) for $110 a month ago.
2TB SSDs are about $70-75 on marketplace or offer up new or like new Samsung/micron/SK. SATA same price as NVMe due to today’s volumes. Some laptops have dual NVMe.
Other options are portables or a cheap little sFTP server where cheap spinners would make sense.
I wouldn’t go mining portables for bare drives as you don’t know what’s in there.
2TB SSDs are about $70-75 on marketplace or offer up new or like new Samsung/micron/SK. SATA same price as NVMe due to today’s volumes. Some laptops have dual NVMe.
Other options are portables or a cheap little sFTP server where cheap spinners would make sense.
I wouldn’t go mining portables for bare drives as you don’t know what’s in there.
Posted on 9/25/25 at 7:25 am to Dallaswho
quote:
Maybe time for new laptop
Been casually shoping for one (still trying to decide what specs I need in a new machine). But I've also been known to hang on to tech way beyond it's practical oscelence date...
This post was edited on 9/25/25 at 7:28 am
Posted on 9/26/25 at 8:35 am to Lonnie Utah
Installed and working fine. But it took me two tries to get it right.
As I said, the spinning drive was the original drive in my machine. When I installed the NVMe, I simply cloned the original to the NVME and called it a day. There were a couple of small recovery partitions on there that were inconsequential to the storage (less than 1 gb total). So when I went to install the new SSD, I repeated the process. Well, my cloning software (Marcium reflect) made an identical copy of the HDD, leaving me with 3 partitions on the SSD and just shy of 1 TB of unformatted space. Of course I had already swapped the HHD and SSD internally. So two hours "wasted" on that attempt. So I plugged in the SATA to USB connector to the old HDD and repeated the process. I dropped the two small partitions on the HDD and expanded the main partition on the SSD. Re-cloned the HDD and 2.5 hours later everything was up and running.
I still have the original 1tb hdd in it's last state that I could back up to if needed.
Thanks for all the help everyone.
As I said, the spinning drive was the original drive in my machine. When I installed the NVMe, I simply cloned the original to the NVME and called it a day. There were a couple of small recovery partitions on there that were inconsequential to the storage (less than 1 gb total). So when I went to install the new SSD, I repeated the process. Well, my cloning software (Marcium reflect) made an identical copy of the HDD, leaving me with 3 partitions on the SSD and just shy of 1 TB of unformatted space. Of course I had already swapped the HHD and SSD internally. So two hours "wasted" on that attempt. So I plugged in the SATA to USB connector to the old HDD and repeated the process. I dropped the two small partitions on the HDD and expanded the main partition on the SSD. Re-cloned the HDD and 2.5 hours later everything was up and running.
I still have the original 1tb hdd in it's last state that I could back up to if needed.
Thanks for all the help everyone.
This post was edited on 9/26/25 at 8:36 am
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