SSD Hard Drive's VS Mechanical IDE Hard Drive's

There are about 4 different styles of PC Solid State Hard drives (SSD) commercially available to the public

• SATA 2.5 inch Form Factor SSD, Looks like standard laptop hard drive.
• M.2 SATA SSD , Is the fist generation of M.2 SSD hard drive memory, looks like a small stick of ram.
• M.2 NVMe SSD , This is the latest more popular SSD for laptop and desktops computers
• PCI-e SSD , Is the largest SSD configuration and is mainly designed for desktop computers and server's. This type of drive holds the biggest amount of hard drive memory and has the fastest performance. The PCI-e card holds the M.2 hard drive, it can be configured a lot of different ways and connects to the PCI-e slots on the motherboard.

The names and terminology for these computer components change a lot and there is a lot of confusion ordering parts and so on. It is best to look at the manufactures specification pink sheet witch is available at the main webpage for the product in question to absolutely verify that the right memory module is being ordered. If the exact model number of the component your looking to add to your motherboard is not listed on the motherboards pink sheet then the chances are it will not work. The pink sheet is a list of every single computer component your motherboard will support. It is written in gold and is sometimes referred to as the Motherboard's Bible, it does not lie or make mistakes. I have learned from over 20 years of experience to always consult in this manual no mater what. It will save anyone days if not months of frustration of going back and forth with computer venders over what is and what is not the right specifications for a computer component.

Solid State Drives are not for everyone

If you have a mechanical hard drive in your computer and there is nothing wrong with it, leave it be
It is said that SSD will be 100's of times faster then a standard mechanical IDE hard drive. They are much faster starting up or on the (boot up) but a lot of people say that is about it, there are some noticeable differences when it comes to playing games, however the regular everyday computer user doesn't really notice to much, so don't be over sold, if you don't need one, don't get one. However if you are getting a SSD most experts including myself will advise people to get ether a Samsung or ScanDisk, these two drives are two of the highest rated with consumer report type media along with computer technicians like myself, try to avoid buying generic no name SSD drives, it really makes a differents.

One of the biggest draw backs of a Solid State drive is there is no warning to when they are going to fail. A regular mechanical drive will usually give plenty of warning when it is starting to fail. This gives the user enough time to do a throw backup of the main system IDE mechanical hard drive, nothing can be more important then this vital warning. Tech savvy people will always have a simultaneous back up of the SSD happing on a back up mechanical drive.

Cloning A SSD HARD Drive, When ever getting a new hard drive for a computer most technicians do not want to clone the old drive to the new one, it is not easy and a lot of extra work. This means the person who owns the computer will have to reinstall all there old programs and perosonal data. Sure a technician will offer to transfer your personal data ''if you can trust them" but that's about it, it is up to you to install all your software, the stuff that makes your computer work and do what you need done.

Fortunately old hard drives can be cloned over to newer SSD drives with out loosing a thing except slowness. Depending on the drive and computer configuration this can either be an easy job or a more challenging one. Chances are it will be challenging and not just anyone should try to do this, keep in mind if someone does not know exactly what they are doing there's a good chance all your the data could be lost for ever.

I have cloned 100's of Windows hard drives the legal way using the correct product identification keys, Windows 10, win 7 and win XP. I know the pros and cons of converting MBR to GPT and vise versa, along with decrypting a hard drive before cloning it and most importantly making sure the old drive is in optimum condition before doing any data transferring or (cloning). Do not trust this type of job to just anyone, you won't be happy.

This is the best free software I have come across for doing hard drive cloning and data back up. Macrium Reflect is not only recommended by me, but a lot of other high level IT technicians. It is really easy to use and bug free. Look for the absolutely free edition of the software at this web page https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree?mo the free download is called "Reflect 8 Free".

Well everyone is in a rush to upgrade you to the latest and greatest next thing I still have plenty of regular mechanical hard drives they have tremendous amounts of data storage and are very economical seeing everybody wants a SSD. Most experts will agree that when a mechanical drive is properly taken cafe of it will last just as long if not longer then a SSD.