My new computer only had an SSD (solid state drive). It’s a Western Digital and no traditional mechanical hard drive at all. So during this pandemic when it comes to technology sometimes you don’t have a lot of choices. A good example is the availability of printers. Did you notice they are really hard to come by? But hard drives, memory, and SSDs seem plentiful. And I wanted more storage space for all the pictures I need to take for my blogging business when working from a home office. So having had a recent bad experience with Amazon I felt it was a good time to venture out into the real world and talk to actual people. And Best Buy has some really smart people working there and their prices were good for me.
A new computer with new technology like an SSD (solid state drive) is great. They are much faster than old hard drives. But I have a lot of files and an old school hard drive is still an inexpensive way to store data. Now in few years maybe that pricing will change. In the end I am still cautious about SSDs though.
I bought a Western Digital 2 TB hard drive and they still have it for $44.99 and they bundle it with Acronis True Image WD Edition. The software is some nice cloning software that is a commercial product to make a copy of another drive. I think I may try that out soon. I just wanted some extra space on a drive I can through files on without messing up my primary drive.
If you were thinking of doing this and were intimidated, then don’t be. Installing a hard drive is one of the easier things to do and not that expensive. In fact, they have plenty of YouTube videos on how to format the drive and how to install the cables.
Just open up the case and look around and you will see where to mount it. They have inside case places marked 3.5 and 2.5 and you will see brackets and holes for screws to mount the drive.
Really there were only two cables, one for power and the SATA data cable. I looked inside my computer and I saw on the case mounting bays with screw holes. It was really easy. The only hard part was the SATA cable. The cable was not hard to install, but the difficulty was the angle of the cable. Most have cable that goes at a right angle straight down. But my case had me mount this on its side so the cable I got wouldn’t work so I picked up a straight SATA cable.
And this got me convinced that a computer’s case is a lot more important than I thought! You need space to mount stuff and to route cables. I would have liked my case to be bigger, but worked with what I had. But it went really smoothly. And getting the old files off my old computer’s hard drive was easy enough. I got a hard drive enclosure and stuck my old drive in there and have been sorting through it transferring only what I needed.
Western Digital makes some great drives. They made the SSD and the hard drive. Actually all my drives are Western Digitals. And my last drive is like seven years old and trust me I used that one really hard. And it’s still working. Now it’s semi-retired in its enclosure. The M.2 SSD drive that is my primary drive now really is fast. I was thinking of getting another SSD drive that wasn’t an M.2 but they cost too much and I want to wait and see how these drives really work. And truthfully building an external drive was really easy to do. But the new drive I got is inside my desktop and screwing the drive into the case was the toughest part. So if you can use a screwdriver you too can install a Western Digital hard drive.
