UPGRADE

GADA DHRISHA RAJESH IN462 9F08
Upgrade your data storage

There are two good reasons to upgrade your hard disk drive. You may need more storage capacity
or you may wish to speed up your rig by switching from a mechanical drive to a solid state drive
(SSD).
CAN YOU UPGRADE?
If you can physically upgrade the storage on your Once you are sure you can
computer, then this is not usually a complicated thing to upgrade, find out which of the
do and can be carried out with few tools other than a technologies and formats are
screwdriver. While desk-top computers usually have compatible with your system.
plenty of slots for extra disk drives, some slim laptops
or all-in-one tablets have no provision for upgrading
their storage. If the storage can be upgraded, there may be provision for only certain size or format
of new storage devices, for example 2.5 inch bays or the latest M.2 format. This will restrict the
type of storage that can be installed.
WHICH DRIVE WORKS FOR YOU? These are available in two formats; the
familiar 2.5 inch disk drive and the newer M.2
If you can upgrade, then you need to find out format stick. The SATA connected drive will
which sort of drive is compatible with your fit in most desk-top computers, while the
machine. It is worth considering what sorts of newer M.2 format requires a special slot to be
storage devices are available. Here are some available. This format is becoming available
of the current sorts on the market: in high-end and light-weight laptop
computers.
 Mechanical hard drives
 Solid state drives The M.2 format is effectively a miniature PCI-
 SATA connected SSDs Express socket with a theoretical maximum
 M.2 format SSDs bandwidth of 32 Gbits/second compared with
6 Gbits/second for SATA connected drives.
MECHANICAL HARD DRIVES M.2 format drives can hit much higher speeds
than are possible over SATA. Premium M.2
These hard drives offer reliable performance format drives using NVMe technology can
at reasonable prices per gigabyte. They are deliver close to four times the speed of a
much slower than SSDs and provide SATA drive.
economical solutions to large capacity All M.2 have standard dimensions and SATA
secondary storage where speed is not at a drives are usually supplied as 2.5 inch format.
premium. They are not recommended as the Just bear in mind that there are two
main system disk where a smaller SSD will thicknesses of SATA drives – 7 mm or 9.5
improve boot up time and system mm. You may need to check on your laptop
performance considerably. computer whether it is limited to the thinner
SOLID STATE DRIVES size. The use of a spacer can pad the
thickness of a slimmer drive in a 9.5 mm
space.
CAPACITY OR SPEED?
The performance difference between an SSD and a mechanical drive is not only about data
transfer speed, but also on seek time. On a mechanical hard disk the head has to physically move
between different areas of the disk surface as it fetches bits of data for different programs or
processes. On an SSD all locations are instantly addressable so performance is fast, smooth and
responsive.
1
GADA DHRISHA RAJESH IN462 9F08
Type of Storage Benefits Disadvantages

Mechanical hard disk drive Large capacity at Slow, not so good as
relatively low price system drive
per GB
Solid state drive (SATA) Fast with commonly Quite expensive
available 2.5 inch slots especially for large
capacity drives
Solid state drive (M.2 Small but very fast Need specialised slot
format) and expensive
Cloud storage Unlimited storage Not under personal
control
A large capacity (up to several terabytes) hard disk drive is economical if speed is not essential,
but economical storage is. Mechanical hard drives are available in both the larger 3.5 inch and the
2.5 inch size. For a primary drive SSD, a capacity of 256 GB or even better 512 GB would be ideal
and affordable. Similarly an M.2 format drive may be used as a primary (system) disk or as super-
fast secondary storage.
So far we have only talked about internal storage. Using an external disk drive to store your data is
also a possibility using any of the drive types discussed here. An advantage of this is that you have
portability of your data and can take it from one computer or location to another. You could also
choose to store your data on a server in the cloud and have it accessible from anywhere that you
can use an internet connection.
UPGRADING TO A NEW SYSTEM DISK
There are several options to transferring the contents of the old disk onto the new disk. One
method is to make a clean install using a version of the operating system on disk. This method will
remove all existing programs you have. These will need to be reinstalled after the new disk is
operating. An alternative method which will preserve your existing programs is to use cloning
software (often supplied with a new disk drive) and make an exact copy of the current disk. This
can be quite straightforward, but if the new disk is a smaller capacity than the one it is replacing
may involve you in deciding what to keep and what to leave out. A third route is to make a virtual
image of the source disk and copy it onto external media, then boot from a disk containing the
imaging software choosing which files to keep.
Good luck if you decide to upgrade your storage.

UPGRADE

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GADA DHRISHA RAJESH IN462 9F08

Upgrade your data storage

Type of Storage Benefits Disadvantages

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