uh? i thought they promoted their value tlc ssd here a few months ago.

maybe they have other priorities now. it's tough to fight with the current top five in the market (intel, samsung, kingston, crucial, sandisk).

as long as you are using it for common use only, it should be good enough.

i guess you have a 1tb single-partitioned hdd, with usable space of 931gb, not 1000gb. 931gb - 859gb free space = 72gb so the used space is about 70gb that you mentioned.

if the above is the case, yes your 120gb ssd will fit. normally to avoid issues during cloning process, we defragment the hdd first, then use disk management to shrink the os partition to become smaller than the capacity of target ssd. (like 100gb in your case), then we do the cloning. after cloning you can use disk management to expand your os partition, if you don't intend to do over provisioning.

ok good to know that

yes, there are hidden but related system partitions that need to be cloned as well, and not all cloning software will do that automatically.

tbh a clean install is always a better option.

sure, it's a good practice to make system images from time to time. it give you a much faster system restores, plus other advantages.

tbh in general ssd is one of the most relatively reliable component in your system. pny is not a common name here, but as long as you're using it for client loads (more reads less writes) it should be fine for many years.

i think it's ok to use for that.

first of all you have to know uv400 is a value ssd, and for a value ssd, usually its writes is slow after its built-in cache is used up (almost like hdd speed when you transfer gigabytes of large files).

however once you get past this, game loading should be improved relatively compared to hdd.

like i said above, yes you can use it for the purpose. performance wise, it's as simple as you get what you pay for.

as always, it's up to you to justify your investments. i will of course suggest you go for mainstream than value ssd, because of advantages that you might not care at all. (850 evo has much better sustainable read/write speed, a longer warranty period)

hm.. better check out user reviews first.

yes of course you can access the data in your old hdd, by connecting it to the new system.

maybe uv400 is good enough for you.

yeah. you can either wait for them or be one of the first to get one.

right; imo just grab what you think good enough for you

for common usage, there will be a noticeable speed boost in file loading and responsiveness. whether it's significant or not, it depends on your actual usage.

it's the same when you convert from sata ssd to pcie ssd and use it for common usage. in my case, i compared samsung 840pro (running on sata2, then sata3 ports), xp941 (pcie 2.0 x4) and then sm951 ahci (pcie 3.0 x4).

the speed boosts for file loading and responsiveness are noticeable. however in terms of common use, it's not that significant. it's when i work that pcie ssd is relatively faster in general. (boot time is irrelevant here because it's affected by many things, like os optimizations, and the number of hardware components that are connected to the system during boot)

this is why i think most people will be fine with at least mainstream sata ssd. (maybe certain value ssds with good read speeds will suffice)

firstly you should use the hdd bay for ssd. put the hdd into optical drive caddy instead.

usually i do this:
1. make a full data backup from current hdd to an external hdd storage;
2. find out if there is a new firmware for your ssd; download it first; the same goes to bios (optional; but apply this before doing anything else);
3. take out hdd and optical drive; put in ssd to hdd bay; apply ssd firmware if necessary (it's better to find out the process by reading instructions published by the manufacturer; usually i apply firmware updates using bootable usb downloaded from manufacturer's site);
4. boot from os usb stick; note that normally there is a key to call out a boot menu that let you select which device to boot, so you don't really need to go into bios to do adjustments;
5. install os;
6. after install go into bios and adjust it so that the ssd can boot as first device (for uefi just make sure windows manager is correctly selected);
7. boot the machine; then turn it off;
8. connect the hdd with external adapter to do cleanup (diskpart > clean); this is to free up everything, including making previously occupied os and hidden system partitions free space for storage;
9. install hdd into optical hdd caddy; install caddy into your system;
10. boot the machine then use disk management to initialize and format hdd (recommended disk type is gpt if you don't use it for other backward-compatible purposes)
11. copy backup data that you need to your hdd.

1. theoretically no so you're good to go with that route.
2. firmware upgrade options depends on manufacturers. if they release a version that works with booted windows yes you can use that. however personally the safer path is to use bootable option.
3. yes you are correct, that's why there is step 1 in my steps. backing up data fully is a better fail-safe practice than to challenge something that might go wrong half way imo.
4. yes.

Something must have happened before the incident. I think this is power-related. Previously i had an incident that i unplugged my storage ssd (connected via usb external enclosure) without proper handling. The disk couldn't be detected, whether using usb or sata cable. All data was lost hehe (i have backups)

i did a power cycling to ssd (meaning, disconnect ssd totally from system; leave it alone for few hours; then connect power cable only to the ssd, no sata cable, and boot up the pc. After that turn the pc off. This time, connect sata cable to it and boot pc into bios to check if it's detected properly) and in my case, the ssd was detected successfully in bios after power cycling. The ssd is fine, besides the part that all data was lost in the process. I still use it for storage and file transfers. No problem so far (crystaldiskinfo's smart status is still good. This is an old sandforce oem drive)

Looking at bright side you have a new ssd coming to you, at least

Power cables from msi? I usually just use power cables that come with psu. Not sure about the quality of after market power cables. (Famous ones like cablemod should be good)

right you can use full-sized msata ssd.

from your list, i think micron m550 and liteon 256m6m should be ok.

It's true it's risky. Well, i will take the risk haha

proof on reliability, no. however i believe they are ok (considering they use mlc nand; marvell controllers; 240gb range is sweet spot in speed and relatively better endurance; and these two brands are common in oem, it's hard to believe people will buy large quantity of their products if they don't have acceptable qualities to cope with manufacturers' standards)

note that the above is just my two cents. it's up to you to pick what you want.

as of now, good ones are samsung 850evo (sata) and 950pro (pcie)

yes, it's not bad.

both are fine.

when most of us are convinced that a 120gb sata ssd is sufficient for everyday use..

Seagate's new 60TB SSD dwarfs the others on the market

https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/09/seagate-60tb-ssd/

it's a prototype for now; said to be released some time in 2017; using micron's 3d tlc nand; 3.5" sas ssd; connection type is dual sas 12Gbps; reads at 1.5GB/s, writes at 1GB/s，random iops 150kIOPS.

This post has been edited by horns: Aug 10 2016, 04:51 PM