Hard drive quandry

My 500gb internal Seagate daily backup drive has developed 49 bad sectors. I am considering replacing it, but what with.

Should I replace with another cheap mechanical drive or replace my Hitachi mechanical drive with an SSD boot drive?

I think we've got to the point now where an SSD is the logical choice (other than for very large storage requirements). A little more expensive but well worth it for the performance leap.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I think we've got to the point now where an SSD is the logical choice (other than for very large storage requirements). A little more expensive but well worth it for the performance leap.

You're right, on impulse I bought a crucial ssd 500gb at local computer shop and adapter for the hdd cage.

What a nightmare trying to find a cloner that works. Acronis that came with the crucial drive failed so trying aomei partition tool and disk copy, seems to be working.

I find the free version of Paragon Hard Drive Manager works well.

I used to like paragon stuff, bit quirky and I think Aomei is a copy so will try that if copy fails.

In win 10 do I need to disable maintenance tasks or anything as I have read defragmentation can cause problems with SSDs.

Windows 10 should not activate automatic defragmentation on SSD drives as long as they are recognised correctly. As you are aware it's dangerous to run this utility. However there is something called Trim that is used to optimised SSD drives. A Trim command allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Nov-15 19:32:39)

You might like to read the tips here: http://www.back2gaming.com/focus-story/ssd-optimizat...

Windows didn't so I turned off defrag on the maintenance app, but I have lost my xp dual boot from the mbr, anyway to restore?

Install EasyBCD. That should let you restore the boot menu.

Never tried it but this link seems to offer some simple resolutions:-
http://www.boyans.net/dual-boot-repair-windows-10.html
There are other command line ways but this may be the easiest.
What did Windows10 think your SSD was then?
In My Computer right click drive>Properties>Tools>Optimise>
It�ll show a list of drives and there is a column called Media Type
It should say Solid state drive, but it will still show that it will be �optimised�
A standard hard disk drive will show as fragmentation
It's most unusual for Windows 10 not to recognise it. Not uncommon in earlier versions.

Forgot that one, as most of my pc's are uefi which it doesn't support.
Good little program which can also give you a Safe Mode option in the boot menu.

Solved with rogers link. Now have XP, win 10 32 bit and win 10 x64 triple boot back in a gui boot menu.

Trim is on according to HD Sentinel, and optimize media type is SSD but it says last optimized on etc. Wonder if it is because I cloned the disk.

Possibly something got carried over from the clone regarding the hard disk info. But seems all ok now. Just make sure that optimisation is included in the maintenance schedule now it's recognised correctly.

Good tip, when I press optimize it says trimming drive. Have re-enabled all drive maintenance.

Perfect