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Solved To Clone or not to Clone?

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Brandon Byrnes

Brandon Byrnes

PCHF Member
Jan 3, 2017
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Wisconsin
#1
I am upgrading the SSHD in my laptop from a Toshiba MQ02ABF050H to a Seagate ST1000LM014, they each have the same specs like SATA 6Gb/s, 8GB NAND, 64 MB Cache, and they are 5,400 rpm drives, but the Seagate is 1TB as opposed to 500GB. I am thinking of just cloning my old drive to the new one. I just recently updated Windows 10 with the Creators Update, which pretty much reinstalled Windows, so my machine is pretty clean and glitch free, and it helps I've only had this laptop for about 7 months. I was thinking of just cloning my old drive because then I won't have to worry about reinstalling Windows and then reinstalling all of my Applications, and transferring all of my files, and redoing all of the settings i have. What is a good free program for cloning, and should I even do it or just do a clean install and reinstall everything. I know doing a clean install will make it run faster, and with a clone I will just be copying any unneeded junk from one hdd to the new one. So yeah should I clone, and if so whats a good free program?
 
#2
Hello Brandon Byrnes,

Honest answer is that I would go for a full SSD device and do a clean install of Windows and the system drivers then create a back up image, I also steer away from Seagate HDDs these days.
 
#3
phillpower2 said:
Hello Brandon Byrnes,

Honest answer is that I would go for a full SSD device and do a clean install of Windows and the system drivers then create a back up image, I also steer away from Seagate HDDs these days.
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I looked up prices for 1TB SSDs and they are just too expensive for me I see they run about $250.00 I don't have that much to spend. Plus I already baought the 1TB SSHD it only cost me $57.00 on Amazon. Why are you steering away from Seagate, I thought they were a pretty good company, like WD, or Toshiba.
 
#4
Wouldn't go for a 1TB SSD tbh, 500GB yes.

Seagate drives have had too many failures over the last 4/5 years.
 

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#5
@phillpower2,
unless I'm reading that graph wrong, it shows since 2014 that WD failure rate is increasing Seagate's has been failing, rapidly.
plus there is no indication of failure rate per units sold. HGST may only have 1% failure but if they only sell 2 for every 10 that Seagate sell, then that's pretty bad.
and then you get into the logistics of, say, Toshiba don't even make drives, they just badge them as their own, I think Fujitsu or Hitachi or someone makes them.
as we all know, graphs and stats can be tweaked to show whatever wants to be highlighted.
 
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#6
Aye, looks like there could be a bit of bias by certain folk now that you mention it ** glad I haven't needed to upgrade a HDD for personal use the past couple of years, fwiw, how they stand 2016 and up to the 3rd quarter of 2017;

** HGST a Western Digital company
 

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#7
So it's looking like Toshiba probably has the most reliable drives? I did do a little research and one site I went to compared my Toshiba drive to the new Seagate drive I am getting, and it looks like the new drive is slower then my Toshiba, which is weird because all of the specs are the same expect for the capacity, my old drive is 500GB and the new one is 1TB. I'm guessing it has something to do with the firmware and controllers for the drives.
 
#8
Okay I'm about to take the plunge in about five minutes. I got my new SSHD and I am going to do a clean install. I moved all of my files to an external HDD and redownloaded all of the setup files for all of the programs I have installed. I also made a backup copy of all of the drivers on my system. I will update you in a couple of hours when I'm done, or tomorrow. Does anyone know the answer to my other question though, If I use my old SSHD as an external usb 3.0 drive will it use the 8GB of NAND on it or does that only get utilized when an OS is installed on it? And will it run at the usb 3.0 speed, the enclosure I got doen't have its own power source, it gets powered by the usb cable.
 
#9
Brandon Byrnes said:
If I use my old SSHD as an external usb 3.0 drive will it use the 8GB of NAND on it or does that only get utilized when an OS is installed on it?
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NAND is nothing to do with Windows it is a hardware safety feature used on a device in case there is a power loss while the said device is in use, far too technical for me to try and explain but the basics are NAND is form of memory used to store a back-up of the writeback cache in the likes of your SSHD, some info at the article here

Brandon Byrnes said:
And will it run at the usb 3.0 speed, the enclosure I got doen't have its own power source, it gets powered by the usb cable.
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The drive can only run as fast as all of the other hardware can handle the data and the notebooks USB port power the device, USB powered HDD devices are fine for using for small amounts of data back up when you are on the move but I would never recommend one for home and would instead go for one that has its own power supply.
 
#10
Hey guys, so everything went good, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 from a USB and was VERY surprised, it only took 15 minutes to install Windoes 10 on an unformatted SSHD. And I thought it was kind of cool that Cortana was telling me everything that was going on and that I was able to do most of the steps by voice commands. My driver backup worked awesome so I didn't have to go online and download all of the drivers I needed. The part that took awhile was re installing all of my assorted programs, and reinstalling Microsoft Office, Office actually took about a half hour to install which is crazy considering it only took 15 minutes to format and install Windows 10. The new SSHD in am using is a tad bit slower when booting, I'd say by about 7 or 8 seconds, but that may be because the drive is larger then my old one. I also decided not to install Classic Shell, I figure I'm going to eventually have to get used to the new Windows start menu, I really don't like it thought, I am just so used to the Windows XP and Windows 7 type Start menu.
Also Regarding another thread I posted about two weeks ago, I purchased a different HDD enclosure and it seems to be working fine. So I think the otherone I had was just messed up , maybe the firmware was bad or something, the new one is made by Wavlink, and is working awesome. It still doesn't have the write speed of my WD External USB 3.0 HDD but it's pretty good, I am getting write speeds of about 70-90Mb/s with this enclosure. So long story short, everything is good so far.
 
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