upgrades

[sm625]

From what I've seen so far SSHD are just gimmicky and overpriced. Maybe there just isnt enough volume in that market for them to make sense. I would go with a two drive solution. Not only is it less expensive, but you also can back up the boot drive image onto the media drive and then replace only the boot drive if it dies. If the 2TB drive dies you are of course still screwed.

Keep in mind that you can clone the SSD onto the HDD to make it bootable, just in case the boot drive fails you still have something to boot from. Just remember to :

A) Not install the 2TB until after windows is installed on the boot drive.
B) keep in mind that if your boot drive fails and it boots off the HDD it is possible that you might not notice this happened unless you are really paying attention.

 

[circusslaughter]

I actually do not have the key to my OS, Microsoft had to remotely install it because they gave me two invalid key with my OEM, one that came with it and the replacement one I requested were both wrong.

At this point I am waiting on my computer to explode because I have 130gb left out of 465gb. I assume my OS took 35gb of my 500gb and that is why I only have 465gb that is usable.

I don't know if a 1tb would be big enough so I am trying to get a 2TB or bigger. What is the best thing I can get for my money that is WD or Seagate brand? That is all that matters to me. I am getting walking dead, skyrim, assassins creed black flag, and tomb raider within the next 3 months plus I am downloading gmod right now and I have all this crap already installed https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=239416179565439&l=7e22613c39 and 1000+ songs.

 

[lehtv]

I actually do not have the key to my OS, Microsoft had to remotely install it because they gave me two invalid key with my OEM, one that came with it and the replacement one I requested were both wrong.

So there's no key, none? Try digging it up from Windows registry. This should work: http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/. Many other free software do the same thing.

At this point I am waiting on my computer to explode because I have 130gb left out of 465gb. I assume my OS took 35gb of my 500gb and that is why I only have 465gb that is usable.

That doesn't sound right. Mostly the space that windows uses is usable space because Windows is installed on your C: drive, a drive that has usable space.

Maybe someone else has an explanation.

I don't know if a 1tb would be big enough so I am trying to get a 2TB or bigger. What is the best thing I can get for my money that is WD or Seagate brand?

In terms of a combination of performance, cost and capacity, the Seagate 2TB drive I linked is the best.

 

[circusslaughter]

LOL Microsoft used that or something like that and it says the key to my OS is invalid. I have no clue what the hell went wrong when I bought it from newegg.

I just don't wanna spend $95 and fill it up in a week because I download too much stuff.

 

[lehtv]

Since MS activated it for you last time, they will probably activate it for you again on a new drive or with a new motherboard.

Then don't download so much stuff I don't really see what choice you have but to buy a bigger drive, and the St2000Dm001 is the best bang for buck.

 

[circusslaughter]

Not that I can afford it right now but is a 4tb WD Red at $175 a good buy?

 

[lehtv]

No, it's slower than Seagate ST2000DM001 (mainly because it runs at lower RPM) and it's optimized to be used as a NAS drive, not a regular storage drive. I'm also fairly certain that failure rates and DOA rates on 4TB drives are considerably higher than on 2TB drives.

 

[BertolomeoDiaz]

I assume my OS took 35gb of my 500gb and that is why I only have 465gb that is usable.

it has to do with binary system
windows shows the numbers in binary
the company that sells the drive in decimal (cause it sounds better)

it´s like 1000 Byte is 1kB in decimal

in binary, 1kB is 2^10 = 1024

meaning 1000 Bytes isn´t seen as a full kB by windows

that effect grows stronger as the numbers grow bigger

so 500Gb decimal = about 465GB binary

i have a 1TB disc that shows 931GB and several more that fit the pattern (256=238, etc.)

i´ve also seen hardware magazines calling it: kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes and tebibytes when they refer to binary amounts
abbreviations being KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB
also see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Unit_symbol

so don´t be disappointed, should your new 2tb drive show 1.86tb or something like that in windows

 

[Cerb]

That doesn't sound right. Mostly the space that windows uses is usable space because Windows is installed on your C: drive, a drive that has usable space.

7 is around 15GB, grows, rather than shrinks. Then there is, by default, the page file and hibernate file. 35GB isn't unreasonable, with 4-8GB of RAM. But, the OP is just confused about a marketing number system not matching the historical numbering system using the same terms .

Actual size examples:
500GB(1000^3/1024^3) = 465.66GiB
1000GB(1000^3/1024^3) = 931.33GiB
2000GB(1000^3/1024^3) = 1862.65GiB
My 480GB SSD, FI, has 447GiB usable space.

The XiB measures are IEC standard units, now.

 

[mfenn]

Or I have a $120 budget, what 2tb or bigger HDD can I get that's a really good brand (not Toshiba)?

What's wrong with a Toshiba drive? I have access to a pretty decent sampling of drives (~10,000) and the Toshibas don't fail any more or less often than the Seagates, WDs, or Hitachis.

no ssd at all: i couldn´t stand it, if you ever tasted the feel of an ssd, you can never go back to operating system on hdd (not without being annoyed, anyway)

SSDs are evil in that way.

 

[mfenn]

At this point I am waiting on my computer to explode because I have 130gb left out of 465gb. I assume my OS took 35gb of my 500gb and that is why I only have 465gb that is usable.

Drives are sold by decimal gigabytes (10^9) but the OS reports actual binary gigabytes (2^30) of capacity. Drives are sold based on decimal gigabytes because that lets manufacturers advertise bigger numbers. Your 500 (decimal) gigabyte drive really only has 465 binary gigabytes of total capacity.

 

[circusslaughter]

I had a Toshiba laptop and it went to shit in 6 months...

 

[Sleepingforest]

And Toshiba has many independent departments with separate quality control guys. It's also about sample size. If mfenn has had equal failures across brands in ~10,000 drives, it's probably valid empirical evidence.

Besides, Toshiba's HDD department is owned by Western Digital now.

 

[mfenn]

And Toshiba has many independent departments with separate quality control guys. It's also about sample size. If mfenn has had equal failures across brands in ~10,000 drives, it's probably valid empirical evidence.

Besides, Toshiba's HDD department is owned by Western Digital now.

:thumbsup:

OP, your logic is flawed in two ways:

1. A sample size of one is too small to determine if Toshiba laptops fail more often than other brands.
2. Even if a large study determined that Toshiba laptops were more likely to fail, that says nothing about Toshiba hard drives.