Thinking about switching from SSD to HDD

[Welly Wu]

I've been thinking about this for quite some time and I wanted to get some opinions before I made a purchase and cemented my decision. I have a System76 Lemur Ultra Thin (lemu4) with a Crucial m4 SATA-3 128 GB SSD and it just isn't enough disk capacity for my needs. I want to be able to take my music library which is about 220 GB of MP3 songs and high resolution FLAC loss less audio files with me on the go without having to carry an external hard disk drive. I've been thinking about saving my Crucial m4 as a backup drive and buying a Samsung SpinPoint 1 TB SATA-2 5400 RPM hard disk drive and re-installing everything starting with Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS 64 bit and all of my favorite software applications. I thought that 128 GB SSD would be enough, but it turns out that I'm missing a lot of software applications because I can't get everything to fit on one disk and I'm longing for a high capacity hard disk drive whereby I can install all of my favorite software applications with plenty of disk space for media files. I did this previously with a Toshiba 1 TB 5400 RPM SATA-2 hard disk drive, but I had to take it out and give it to my father because he needed it to store his media files. I know that there is a tremendous difference in speed and performance, but at this point I can take the performance hit in order to gain a huge advantage in available disk space.

I could justify the purchase of a 960 GB or 1 TB SSD, but it will take quite some time for me to save up enough money to buy one. I'd rather put those hundreds of dollars in my bank account toward the purchase of a newer System76 notebook PC in the future. I haven't ruled out this option, but it's a distant one for me right now.

I'm not entirely sold on SSDs. Sure, they're fast as hell, but having to carry around an external 2 TB hard disk drive is a pain in the butt. I want everything to be stored locally on my System76 PC.

Do you think I ought to do it or should I not do it?

[zero2xiii]

Hay,

I would say unless you ACTUALLY NEED the performance of the SSD, dump it. Get yourself a decent size drive and get on with life.

The only people who really NEED SSD drives are maybe: Professional video editor; HUGE multi track audio editor, recorder, mixers; Maybe (although I doubt it highly) hard core gamers; people with huge ego's that want to say "oh look how fast my system boots"...

You need space, get a HDD. You need speed, stick with the SSD.

My opinion.
Cheers

[stephane3]

If you have one optic bay you can buy a bay to put a 2nd HDD on laptops, not sure if System76 sell that but its worth a search

[rrnbtter]

Greetings,
Welly Wu, If you can afford it I would suggest you buy it today, either way you decide. I was involved with the computer rush from MSDOS all the way to WinXP and it didn't make since to me to chase hardware. You will always be doing without today waiting for tomorrow. When tomorrow's hardware arrives, what you have been waiting for will be obsolete. It seems to me that even though the PC market has slowed, the changes are more drastic. Who knows what tomorrows needs will be! Buy it!

[Paqman]

If what you need is tons of storage, get a crusty old magnetic drive for now and upgrade to a big SSD when the price has come a bit. Personally I love SSDs and don't find myself too limited by them, but my needs obviously differ from yours.

How much storage do you actually need though? Does your laptop have an SD slot? You can get SD cards up to 128GB now, and if it's just data you're reading (eg: music) an SD will be plenty quick enough.

[Welly Wu]

I got my original Toshiba SATA-2 1 TB 5400 RPM hard disk drive from my father today. I haven't re-installed everything yet because I'm tired from helping him to move out to an apartment with my family and friend's help. I'm thinking this over tomorrow to evaluate my storage needs.

128 GB SDXC cards are a no go with System76 laptops and Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS 64 bit. I tried it and never got it to work right.

[Welly Wu]

Anyone here have the new Crucial m500 SATA-3 960 GB Solid State Disk or Samsung EVO SATA-3 1 TB Solid State Disk? I am thinking about getting either one of these high capacity SSDs this holiday season or sooner.

[mJayk]

External HDD an option at all?

[Welly Wu]

I have two external hard disk drives:

1. Seagate FreeAgent Desk GoFlex 3.00 terabyte Super Speed USB 3.0
2. Western Digital My Passport Portable 2.00 terabyte Super Speed USB 3.0

I haven't used my Toshiba 1 TB 5400 SATA-2 laptop hard drive yet. I had to help a friend to do a system recovery for his HP desktop PC running Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 64 bit. I may get to this project next week.

I already have my media library and confidential files stored on my external Seagate hard disk drive. I have a backup copy of my media library on my Western Digital portable hard disk drive. I think I'm good for now. I might wind up forgoing the Toshiba 1 TB hard disk drive and I may get a Crucial m500 960 GB SATA-3 Solid State Disk. I don't want to re-install Ubuntu from scratch along with all of my favorite software applications twice by the end of this year.

[ssam]

Can you fit a HD and SSD in there (you can on some laptops like x series thinkpad)?

Have you looked at the hybrid drives, they have large HD and a small amount of NAND to act as a cache.

Also be sure to check drive hight when buying a 2.5" drive for a laptop (usally 7mm or 9mm). Most of the 1TB drives are taller and will not fit in small laptops.