new computer

Yippee Yippee.. got my computer back this afternoon from my wee local repair shop and have just connected it back up. The guy fitted a 500Gb SSD, swapped the operating system and all my files, sorted a few other minor problems and all done in one day and the cost was very reasonable.

The result is very impressive with everything flying along at a good speed. You are absolutely right Emgee, it is good to support local small shops, the level of service is often far better than the big boys offer.

Doug

Douglas, hope all your old programs work with the new operating system, some of mine fail with Win10.

Emgee

Fortunately I was on the latest version of windows 10 before the hard drive showed signs of failing so my machine was returned exactly as it left me in terms of the operating system so no problems there. I have spent hours in the past sorting out computer problems myself ,so was delighted to have it all done for me this time. I might have tried replacing the hard drive myself but I had no experience of transferring the operating system ,so was best left to an expert.For the very reasonable cost it was well worth it.

Doug

Doing it your self using Crucial's or Kingston's free software is straight forward, as I said earlier have done it a few times now and well within most peoples capability and is probably how the computer shop did it. I assume the computer is now booting much faster and in general faster which extends it's life for minimal outlay.

I have a cheap cloning tool that you just pop the drive to be cloned and the new drive in then press the button, 2 hours later job done, worked a treat to replace my old drive with a SSD hybrid drive.

Mike

One thing to remember is with an SSD you don’t need to run defrag or optimisation .

I know that my Norton offers this and i had to disable it in the Norton settings, I would also look in computer management just to make sure there is no defrag schedule set .

Try to keep the download and delete of files to your C/ drive to a minimum as SSD have a finite amount of cycles in them - Don’t. worry ! you are not likely to exceed this unless you are downloading a massive amount of very very large files like movies and deleting them shortly after , you are better off either leaving them on there until you start to run out of space ( unlikely with 500gb ) then delete all of them or download these files straight to an external drive or storage device and not to your C/ drive if possible .

I always try to support the small operators especially when the big chain/ box stores have bought into just about every market here in Australia which is driving the small independent retailers out of business as they simply can’t get the bulk buy discounts that the big retailers can barter for with their suppliers .

That's interesting about the defrag not being required, I must check to see if that needs disabling. With regard to changing the drive oneself, I could have saved a few quid but there could have been complications with a drive on its last legs and it is many years since I have delved inside a computer. In the past when money was a lot tighter I would probably have done it myself, but there is a lot to be said for the convenience of having it done by an expert.

When I had a look online about SSD's I did discover that they have a theoretical limited life but that does not seem to be a major issue for most users.

Doug

Defrag - that's a Microsoft feature - how quaint!

Seriously though, a file stored on a hard disk consists of a linked list of smallish blocks. On an empty disk these are physically written in sequence on the magnetic media and can thus be read very quickly. But as the disk fills up and files are deleted, new blocks will be written into whatever spare space has become available. Then, in order to read a file, the head has to jump from track to track as it follows the list. As physically moving the head takes an eternity, it may be worth defragmenting the disk every so often. All this does is to reorganise the physical blocks so that more of them can be read in order without the head changing track. Being electronic, with no delays due to head movement, an SSD doesn't care much about where blocks are located in memory - it can read and write fragmented files as fast as unfragmented files. And, because SSDs have a relatively limited read-write life, it doesn't pay to waste them on unnecessary defrag reorganisations.

As disk fragmentation has been an obvious problem since disks were invented much effort has been put into developing file-systems that minimise the effects. Microsoft's NTFS is not the best of all possible file systems, and UNIX / Linux / Mac / Android systems all use 'better' alternatives that don't need the same level of periodic cleansing.

A good combination if there's space is to combine the advantages of SSDs and Hard Drives by using both. An SSD is excellent at speeding everything up but they are pricey and short lived compared with a hard drive for storing bulk data. It pays to organise a computer so everything system is on the SSD while everything user is on a hard-drive. Then the time sensitive operating system goes like the wind, whilst less time critical user data turns up in due course. As operating systems can use both drives in parallel, an SSD + HD will perform nearly as well as a single SSD computer, whilst the HD takes much of the strain that would otherwise reduce SSD life times.

That said, these days I wouldn't worry too much about SSD lifetimes, as with all things electronic they get better every year.

Personally, I prefer replacing unreliable computers over about 5 years old because new ones are so much better! As technology is still advancing rapidly, new computers come with more cores and memory, plus faster processors, memory, bulk storage, graphics, networking and multi-media. The improvement will be obvious.

As a career IT person I normally do computer maintenance myself but I think taking a sick computer to a professional is a sensible way to get it fixed. I'm always conscious the facilities I have at home for diagnosing and mending computers are inferior to what was available at work. A professional should have skills, experience, knowledge and tools. Paying for them rather than bumbling around in a fog is often the smart option!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 07/11/2019 14:02:28

I suggested just a replacement SSD as I got the impression from the original post that Doglas was not a big PC user. I addd the caveat "if you are not planning to buy any new software". It's easy for computer "nerds" to forgetf a machine is otherwise OK and powerful enough to run the existing software does not have to replaced. A faster disk and "tune-up" can work wonders.

Robert G8RPI

Re No need to defragment an SSD quite true but... you must ensure that "Trim is enabled. It should be enabled by default but occasionally it's not.

Raymond,

Could you please explain that a little bit more?

John

.

Wikipedia has a helpful page: **LINK**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)

Which reminds me: I received my annual request today, for a small donation ...

It seems like good value, compared with many things that we waste money on at this time of year; and yet:

[quote] You are part of the 2% of readers who donated to support Wikipedia. [/quote]

MichaelG.

Spot on Robert, I am not a big computer user but wanted a reliable machine that was not too slow. With the work that was done on my machine I think I have achieved that objective. The computer runs like new and is a "green" alternative to buying a new machine. I don't think that buying a new computer would have got me a really noticeable improvement in performance for what I do, so for me I think I made the right choice. Time will tell.

Doug

That seems an interesting tool now that EaseUS Todo Backup no longer includes disk cloning in the free version. Can you say a little more about this tool. What's it called, where did it come from, and how much was it? Or maybe a link to it.

Don't know which duplicator Mike uses, but CPC have a few, varying in price from £70 to £700.

True, but the machine is only 'reliable' because it has given 9 years trouble free service. But don't forget it just failed!

Happened to be the hard-drive, but the fact of life is several other components are ageing too. Heat over time isn't good for electronics, and excess heat is likely if the cooling system is blocked with fluff or the cooling fan is past its best. Lots of things cause old computers to give way, sooner or later it will become 'Beyond Economic Repair'.

Professionally, laptops are usually lifed at 3 years, mainly because they get dropped, soaked or lost. Desktops are typically budgeted for replacement every 5 years, and Servers 7 years. Servers last longer than desktops because they run continually in a temperature controlled room - kept cool with hardly any power cycling.

Of course computers can and do last much longer, but statistically 9 year old computers are much less reliable than new ones. Computer reliability follows the bathtub curve. Due to a sprinkling of manufacturing faults brand new machines - less than 1% - are much more likely to fail than any that have run OK for a couple of months. Once they get to a certain age - perhaps 6 years - reliability gradually goes to pot, much as I'm doing. It's so sad - I used to have hair and run about!

Dave

Falco, The page that Michael linked to will explain it clearly to you. and much better than I can. If Trim is not enabled [ and as I said it SHOULD ] but tech gremlins can on occasion have it disabled. it will seriously degrade the performance / life of the SSD. When enabled It optimizes the SSD and ensures that it will run at optimum speed regardless of age/use. and is related to the deleting of data much the same as Defrag does in Mechanical Hdd's.