Looking for a SSD

I am realising that I will need to upgrade to Windows 10 sooner rather than later and my intention is to upgrade my 2013 pc's SSD, currently a 240 GB Kingston Hyper X SSD.

Any suggestions for a comparable SSD? I would have gone for the 480 GB version of the existing, but that is showing by Kingston as being discontinued.

I am thinking of a 480 GB SSD since the current 240 GB one is 75% full and I am assuming that Win 10 64-bit Pro will need more. I can retain Win7 on the existing SSD.

My pc is based on a Novatech 'bare bones' Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 Motherboard (AMD 790 Chipset), an AMD FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Processor, together with an 8GB of DDR3 1600MHz Memory. A XFX AMD Radeon HD 6670 2GB DDR3 Graphics Card and initially a 64 GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive for the C: drive (for the OS and programs) and two 1TB HDDs for D: & E: (D: for Data and E: for Backup.)

I upgraded the 64 GB SSD to a 240 GB Kingston Hyper X SSD a few years back and November 2022 changed the two 1TB drives for two WD drives. (a Black for Data and a Blue for Backup).

Many thanks for reading.

Cheers!

Samsung EVOs are generally well regarded. In your case I would probably go for the 1 TB QVO EVO 870 https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/samsung-870-qvo-... . Not the absolute fastest you can buy, but faster than your current SSD. At £60 it's only £8 more than the 500 GB version, and you can never have too much storage.

Crucial MX500 at 1TB and 2TB are decently priced against the others:

1TB List

2TB List

The 4TB is also competitive vs the others, but thecost is getting a bit steep, unless you need 4TB.

4TB List

That price for the QVO EVO is ridiculous! It’s £60 at Novatech, and they aren’t always the cheapest supplier.

If you Google SSD reviews you will find every review recommends the Samsung 870 EVO as the best consumer SATA SSD.

With that age of computer I’d argue that the QVO is just as good, but they’re both fine drives. The QVO is considerably cheaper.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

With that age of computer I’d argue that the QVO is just as good, but they’re both fine drives. The QVO is considerably cheaper.

One benefit on older machines is the Samsung Magician software their drives come with. If you have sufficient RAM (8GB min, 16GB or more recommended) this can improve performance dramatically even with an old 2013 PC... it is intelligent caching.

Cool. Never shop at Novatech, so it's academic. Was providing a comparison of listed SSDs. Prefer Evo if going Samsung, but £/GB is what some people prefer.

I've had good experiences with Samsung EVO's in PCs as other folks have noted.

The only let down was a pair of EVO 850 M.2 1TB sticks around 2018 used as cache in 8-drive Synology NAS. I burnt through them in around 2 years. I never bothered replacing the cache to be fair and stuck in a 10GbE network card in lieu in the expansion slot. Runs faster than ever.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions on which SSD.

I will be going for Samsung. Decision now is on size and QVO or EVO.

Now to sort out my OKI printer (see separate post!)

Thanks again!

In reply to a post by Ancient_Mariner:

I will be going for Samsung. Decision now is on size and QVO or EVO.

Worth checking that the one you go for has onboard ram/cache otherwise there can be some scenarios where they are not much better (slower?) than a mechanical drive.

Still faster than any mechanical drive as there is no 'seek' time. Throughput of data transferred will mostly depend on the interface, the older PCs will have SATA2 so max out at 300 Mbps if you are lucky. Newer PCs (Intel Ivy Bridge onwards) should have SATA3 (500 Mbps) which most modern SSDs should easily meet.

Both the disks in question can max out a SATA 3 interface. There’s a review of the QVO here: https://uk.pcmag.com/ssd/127593/samsung-ssd-870-qvo with a slew of benchmarks. In some cases the QVO actually outperforms the standard EVO (which is certainly not a slouch).

Excellent! I have a couple of EVOs (2.5" SATA 3) that I have been very pleased with.

I’ve got a NVMe EVO in my PC and a couple of USB C external Samsung drives for my Mac Mini. All excellent drives and all blazingly fast. The externals are about twice the speed of a SATA 3 drive.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I’ve got a NVMe EVO in my PC and a couple of USB C external Samsung drives for my Mac Mini. All excellent drives and all blazingly fast. The externals are about twice the speed of a SATA 3 drive.

My old PC had USB-C that was only USB 3.0 so about the speed of SATA 3, but the newer machines have USB 3.1Gen2x2 or USB4 support and these are stunning fast. Confusing all being the same connector. I think your M1 Mac Mini is USB4 & Thunderbolt, the same as my Surface ?

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I think your M1 Mac Mini is USB4 & Thunderbolt, the same as my Surface ?

It's not an M1, it's the last of the Intel Minis (got a good deal on a refurbished one from Apple with an i7 and 32GB of RAM). It's got 4 Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports and a couple of USB 3.0 ones.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

It's not an M1, it's the last of the Intel Minis (got a good deal on a refurbished one from Apple with an i7 and 32GB of RAM). It's got 4 Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports and a couple of USB 3.0 ones.

Nice!

Thanks for the heads up on Samsung SSDs.
I ordered a 1TB 870 EVO and a Win10 Pro 64-bit DVD from NovaTech yesterday and they arrived this morning via DPD (who are excellent around here).

Just need to decide the best way to handle the lack of a Win10 driver for my OKI C5200n printer and find a free day to rebuild my Win7 pc with the new OS and Samsung EVO SSD.

Cheers!

In reply to a post by Ancient_Mariner:

Thanks for the heads up on Samsung SSDs.
I ordered a 1TB 870 EVO and a Win10 Pro 64-bit DVD from NovaTech yesterday and they arrived this morning via DPD (who are excellent around here).

Just need to decide the best way to handle the lack of a Win10 driver for my OKI C5200n printer and find a free day to rebuild my Win7 pc with the new OS and Samsung EVO SSD.

Cheers!

2004-ish vintage. Well done on sweating that asset, if so, nearly 20-years.

You could try the generic PCL drivers with it - they may work well enough for your needs if it supports them.

In reply to a post by ian72:

You could try the generic PCL drivers with it - they may work well enough for your needs if it supports them.

PostScript is or was a pretty good device independent printer language. Not sure if Clive’s old OKI is PS though.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

PostScript is or was a pretty good device independent printer language. Not sure if Clive’s old OKI is PS though.

From the PDF the 5200 does not do PostScript.
https://my.okidata.com/PP-C5200N.nsf/InsideSpecs?Ope...

The C5200n shows as a "Windows Printer" which implies it requires the Windows machine to do the work, and isn't a general printer. Without the right driver, this printer is likely no use to anyone. Old style "host based printing"

The C5400n printer shows as a PCL / PostScript printer in the PDF, and should work with any driver.

I think Clive has a 5200 ?

Yep. Sounds like its had a good innings though.

Yes, a C5200n to be exact.

Initially on WinXP, now on Win7 (Pro 64-bit) It connects to my pc via my wired LAN since it is in an upstairs room, pc is downstairs. The RJ45 network connection was standard.

Although the case looks like it's smoking 50 a day, it prints fine and certainly good enough for what I want.

Cheers!

In reply to a post by Ancient_Mariner:

Yes, a C5200n to be exact.

Initially on WinXP, now on Win7 (Pro 64-bit) It connects to my pc via my wired LAN since it is in an upstairs room, pc is downstairs. The RJ45 network connection was standard.

Although the case looks like it's smoking 50 a day, it prints fine and certainly good enough for what I want.

I had an inkjet (also Ethernet) that only worked with Windows. Dual boot the machine into Linux and the only way to print was to use another Windows PC on the network as a print server... Maybe that is an option if installing the driver in compatibility mode doesn't work.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Ancient_Mariner:

Yes, a C5200n to be exact.

Initially on WinXP, now on Win7 (Pro 64-bit) It connects to my pc via my wired LAN since it is in an upstairs room, pc is downstairs. The RJ45 network connection was standard.

Although the case looks like it's smoking 50 a day, it prints fine and certainly good enough for what I want.

I had an inkjet (also Ethernet) that only worked with Windows. Dual boot the machine into Linux and the only way to print was to use another Windows PC on the network as a print server... Maybe that is an option if installing the driver in compatibility mode doesn't work.

Just thinking out loud - could @Ancient_Mariner install VirtualBox on his Windows10 machine. Then run a virtual copy of Windows 7 on VB (with the OKI Win7 printer driver correctly loaded).

Then simply share the printer from within Win 7?

Bit clunky but should work.

You still need drivers to print to a shared printer.

I think the extra steps that I outlined in my reply to Clive would be necessary.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Bit clunky but should work.

Yes, it should work, or using VMWare Workstation Player Free. If its Win10 Pro then the built in HyperV feature would also work, as long as can find a copy of Win10 to install.

The Win7 machine then will run the host-based code and share with the network, typically accepting generic metafiles (WMF / WPF) based print jobs from other network machines.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

You still need drivers to print to a shared printer.

In most cases the Win7 machine with its driver would provide sufficient to the networked Windows machines. A problem if you are using a Mac or Linux over the SMB shared printer.

No. The client machine needs the driver as it spools the print job before sending it to the server. When you configure a shared printer on a client the server sends the driver installation software to the client. You would need to use some intermediate format (pdf is probably the most universal), send that to server, then have an application on the server to print those files.

As I suggested to Clive in my reply to his request for a driver.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

You still need drivers to print to a shared printer.

I think the extra steps that I outlined in my reply to Clive would be necessary.

Ah yeah. With you now. In the other thread which I just read 👍

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

No. The client machine needs the driver as it spools the print job before sending it to the server.

Thats how it worked in Win9x and NT4 days, but I believe with Win8 (so zero use to Clive) and later the "Enhanced point and print" improvements was intended to stop having to install printer drivers on thousands of call centre machines, and only install the printer driver on the 'print server' either a Windows Server or a Windows Workstation class machine.

viz:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/d...

Edited by jchamier (Sun 15-Jan-23 17:44:37)

I thought that was a Windows Server technology. Doesn’t printer sharing from a workstation use the older model?

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I thought that was a Windows Server technology. Doesn’t printer sharing from a workstation use the older model?

I thought it was the same on both Server and Workstation, but may rely on the right "type" of driver. Probably not going to help Clive.

Tagging this on the end. I had a bit of a search last night on this and it appears it *may* be able to be done as a shared printer from within Windows 7 to a Windows 10 client. See this blog post / article from a university CS dept.

Caveats are that the Windows 7 machine should be able to offer 64-bit drivers.

So found a version of the driver on the old OKI North America website which has a version 2.1.0.0 driver for Windows 7. Admittedly couldn’t download it from there, had to find another hosting site.

https://my.okidata.com/pp-C5200n.nsf/openingdrivermenu

Maybe it’s worth a shot trying this on a virtual guest install of Windows 7 x64?

That just appears to be offering a driver that the client can download. Not much use if there is no suitable driver.

Yep agreed it would need to be the correct driver for use as a shared driver with Win10.

My search on this lasted all of about 10 mins. Not exhaustive at all - perhaps a lead for Clive, worth exploring if there’s nothing else.

Many thanks Pheasant, TinyM, James et al for the effort you have gone to on this.

To recap, my PC is 64-bit currently Win 7 Pro and I intend to install Win10 Pro on a new SSD. My OKI printer is a C5200n which lives in a room upstairs whereas both mine and my wife's PCs are in a home office downstairs, connected via wired LAN. There is also a Brother mono printer in the home office.

I will explore printer sharing as per the Education Authority of Hong Kong's FAQ re Win7 &10.

Whilst not 100% convenient, since I have to go upstairs to collect whatever the OKI has printed (I can switch on/off remotely via a Tapo smart socket and a phone APP) I have also considered transferring documents for printing as PDFs via a memory stick to a Toshiba NB100 notebook which runs Win XP Home 32-bit, connected via USB. This has OKI C5200n drivers. With a bit of effort I can likely network the NB100 to the OKI C5200n via the existing LAN connection.

I am in no immediate rush, I have some office tasks for the next couple of months (or so) which I don't want to upset with a change of OS to Win 10.

I will update this post as and when I make changes to the PC etc.

Thanks again for the help and KT.

Cheers!