Forget the cleanup efforts. Not worth the time. Get a 1TB Samsung EVO SSD - about $120. You don't need a fresh install, that is too much extra work and unless your machine is wonky, you don't need it.
Maxed Hard Drive
- Thread starter ptonsparky
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zbang
Senior Member
- Location
- Roughly 5346 miles from Earls Court
Don't know about that. It's like building a bigger garage- you've got to move everything into the new one, including the junk, and it's still going to fill up with more junk.
Really, it's worth the time to clean things up and reorganize as needed, even if you do get a larger drive. Been there.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
Can't speak on behalf of SSD's too much but mechanical drives do tend to be slower at accessing what you want/need when they are full. Just running a defrag utility that also optimizes the storage can make some difference, placing frequently used files at the inner parts of the drive will increase access time when utilizing those files. Of course defrag without optimizing could possibly make some difference on a mostly full disk.
Ragin Cajun
Senior Member
- Location
- Upstate S.C.
A new SSD will amaze you how fast your old computer becomes.
Clone your old drive to the new SSD and replace the old drive with the new SSD. That's what I did.
Clone your old drive to the new SSD and replace the old drive with the new SSD. That's what I did.
zbang
Senior Member
- Location
- Roughly 5346 miles from Earls Court
The ideal of placing frequently-used files near the center of the disk was a good idea 40 years ago, in the days of 14" platters holding 5MB each and spinning at 3600rpm or slower. With them, the latency of changing tracks mattered a lot and neither the controllers nor the OS did do any caching or predictive reads.
Modern spinning drives, and I mean for the last 20+ years, usually spin at 5400/7200 rpm (some at 10k), have a much higher data density, much faster head movement, and a much smaller distance to move those heads- the major latency comes from the actual spinning media. The in-drive controllers usually read more than a single 512b or 4kb block at a time, they tend to optimize head movement, etc etc. Add to that the caching done by the OS and there's little to gain by explicitly placing files, I'm not sure how many modern file systems even allow that.
BTW, in general a 7200rpm 3.5" drive will max out at around 182Mb/s sequential read/write and about 130 random access operations per second (aka IOPS)- that's simply driven by rotational latency. Most 2.5" drives of the same rpm will turn out close to 300 random ops/second because of the smaller head travel.
Modern spinning drives, and I mean for the last 20+ years, usually spin at 5400/7200 rpm (some at 10k), have a much higher data density, much faster head movement, and a much smaller distance to move those heads- the major latency comes from the actual spinning media. The in-drive controllers usually read more than a single 512b or 4kb block at a time, they tend to optimize head movement, etc etc. Add to that the caching done by the OS and there's little to gain by explicitly placing files, I'm not sure how many modern file systems even allow that.
BTW, in general a 7200rpm 3.5" drive will max out at around 182Mb/s sequential read/write and about 130 random access operations per second (aka IOPS)- that's simply driven by rotational latency. Most 2.5" drives of the same rpm will turn out close to 300 random ops/second because of the smaller head travel.
It really depends on the workload.
I like to keep one machine as a 'beater' for everything, email, web surfing, following links around the Internet. If the machine gets random downloads from adding apps, most of that stuff is industrial grade spyware. They scan and harvest your data. The beater pc, I would never clone that. If I were running VM's and clones, the dirty clone gets disposed of and start over with the clone of the new machine. The VM is supposed to be an easier way of starting again with a fresh OS and for the dirty clone, it is supposed to not escape the memory / drive allocation of the VM.
Without the VM's, the work machines are dedicated pc's and run only the bare minimum workload apps. No email, very limited web surfing, no spyware like Zoom, Teams, Steam and all that. My old X1C gen 3 became the beater when I got the new laptop, which it had already started to do because I liked it so much. Plan for the beater is to routinely reload the OS fresh. Plan for the work machine is it should be a running spare and not have to (be broken for any reason).
If the workload is many huge files, new drive and new laptop are indicated. If the machine does everything including entertainment and leisure, wiping the existing drive and reinstalling the OS is what I would be planning. It would be loaded with spyware. Sweep the archive off the machine to a USB something and kill the spyware, reload the OS and the apps you want to run again.
I like to keep one machine as a 'beater' for everything, email, web surfing, following links around the Internet. If the machine gets random downloads from adding apps, most of that stuff is industrial grade spyware. They scan and harvest your data. The beater pc, I would never clone that. If I were running VM's and clones, the dirty clone gets disposed of and start over with the clone of the new machine. The VM is supposed to be an easier way of starting again with a fresh OS and for the dirty clone, it is supposed to not escape the memory / drive allocation of the VM.
Without the VM's, the work machines are dedicated pc's and run only the bare minimum workload apps. No email, very limited web surfing, no spyware like Zoom, Teams, Steam and all that. My old X1C gen 3 became the beater when I got the new laptop, which it had already started to do because I liked it so much. Plan for the beater is to routinely reload the OS fresh. Plan for the work machine is it should be a running spare and not have to (be broken for any reason).
If the workload is many huge files, new drive and new laptop are indicated. If the machine does everything including entertainment and leisure, wiping the existing drive and reinstalling the OS is what I would be planning. It would be loaded with spyware. Sweep the archive off the machine to a USB something and kill the spyware, reload the OS and the apps you want to run again.
Strathead
Senior Member
- Location
- Ocala, Florida, USA
- Occupation
- Electrician/Estimator/Project Manager/Superintendent
A proper program will find true duplicates, as in exactly the same size etc, then you can delete either. You should also be able to sort by date, in most cases you would delete the older file.
Amps
Electrical Contractor
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Electrical, Security, Networks and Everything Else.
On my office desktop PC I dual boot OS's. Windows 10 and free Ubuntu Linux. I use Ubuntu for 90% of my work and all online work. The free Linux programs and apps work great, including an accounting / invoicing program. No anti-virus is needed with Linux. I use Windows 10 to run Turbo Tax and a few other Windows programs. Linux has so many distributions, all free, light weight and you can run many of them on old hardware.
MD Automation
Senior Member
- Location
- Maryland
- Occupation
- Engineer
Will echo this - and mention that I use Macrium Reflect. There is a free version. Have used Acronis in the past, it's a fine product as well.
caribconsult
Senior Member
- Location
- Añasco, Puerto Rico
- Occupation
- Retired computer consultant
I assume, since you said it's a laptop, the this is the one and only hard drive in your system, which means it also has your operating system (you didn't say MAC or PC) on it, so replacing the drive generally means re-installing the OS, which can be daunting if you're not a computer geek. If it's a PC, try downloading CCleaner (free version) and let it scour your drive for excess and unneeded files. I'm sure MAC's have something similar. A far easier option is buying an external USB drive....I have one that is 4TB, which is a huge amount of storage and I think it cost around $59 on EBay. Then you can transfer photos and stuff like that to the external drive and continue to use the SS drive as your main drive. If you don't need that much extra storage, USB thumbdrives are available in sizes up to 256GB, maybe even more, and they are quite compact.
The OP has Windows 10 according to one post. An older Mac would be very easy to upgrade -- newer Macs have non-upgradable mass storage. There is no need to reinstall Windows and reload everything. That route is just so much more trouble. Cloning is the way to go. Regardless, you may need the Windows Product Key for activation as Windows often times recognizes the replacement hard drive as new and then wants to be sure you aren't stealing Windows. My experience is that even if you don't have it and you have to call Microsoft they will generate a new key for you after asking some questions - basically trying to make sure you aren't doing this over and over.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
Yes major hardware changes sometimes prompts windows to reactivate, drive containing the OS, different main board, processor, etc.
ptonsparky
Tom
- Occupation
- EC - retired
I replaced a 1T SSD on small laptop that was giving me grief. To many shit programs
I have a device I can drop old drives into and use them for storage. I formatted the SSD. It didn't take long. I'll try moving some stuff to that in my spare time.
I have a device I can drop old drives into and use them for storage. I formatted the SSD. It didn't take long. I'll try moving some stuff to that in my spare time.
Nice. Being able to recover with a fresh OS install, fresh install of the apps you want, is kind of a modern day survival skill. Mostly it takes the hours for the software to download and a fast internet connection. You might be able to teach the grandkids to do it for you.
The Windows OEM license is keyed to the hardware config of the machine. As long as the license is going back to the original machine, that's one of the legit uses and you should be able to reinstall the OS as many times as necessary. Swapping the drive is plug and play but you have to save what you need before wiping it. You can Google the machine and find out how to get the license from it.
It is unavoidable if the machine does everything and goes everywhere, everyone will be trying to drop a spyware and a crypto miner on it. That's what running a VM is supposed to be able to do, dispose of the old OS clone and start over with a clone of the fresh install.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
Often it is grandkids that teach the grandparent how to do such things.
ptonsparky
Tom
- Occupation
- EC - retired
You have a LOT of optimism. Never even thought doing a fresh install. The tech I hire every now and then will have to do any thing more than move a few files.
It's one of those things that gets easier after going through it a few times. The Win 10 iso boots off a thumb drive afaik. So you just need that, the new or existing drive, and a good internet connection for the drivers. New hard drive should be one of the config changes that is allowed with the old OEM license. You could probably do one in less time than it takes to drive to the PC service place.
Every time I've tried a fresh install I usually run into trouble reinstalling apps from an old download. As long as you can get fresh install downloads of the software you want to run, those have been running better and easier. The apps get updated also usually same apps but fresh versions. Wiping and reloading everything has been getting easier with time.
I still kind of hold my breath when powering up first time with a hardware change, but compared to the old days the problems are much less. I would suggest practicing on a machine that you're not worried about wiping the data. You can Google for the exact procedure but I believe all you have to do is put the Win OS iso on a thumb drive and if you have an internet connection, plus the time, you have everything you need.
I would recommend a backup machine so you can Google for answers if needed and get drivers. As long as Windows boots it should get everything else it needs by itself. It just needs time and a few reboots to do its thing.
The only real hang up would be is if one of the apps you need is no longer supported and not available as a fresh download.
Every time I've tried a fresh install I usually run into trouble reinstalling apps from an old download. As long as you can get fresh install downloads of the software you want to run, those have been running better and easier. The apps get updated also usually same apps but fresh versions. Wiping and reloading everything has been getting easier with time.
I still kind of hold my breath when powering up first time with a hardware change, but compared to the old days the problems are much less. I would suggest practicing on a machine that you're not worried about wiping the data. You can Google for the exact procedure but I believe all you have to do is put the Win OS iso on a thumb drive and if you have an internet connection, plus the time, you have everything you need.
I would recommend a backup machine so you can Google for answers if needed and get drivers. As long as Windows boots it should get everything else it needs by itself. It just needs time and a few reboots to do its thing.
The only real hang up would be is if one of the apps you need is no longer supported and not available as a fresh download.
I would add that if it's business critical apps, I would run those on a dedicated machine not mixed with anything else, as much as possible. Meaning no email, chat, web surfing. I would plan on not having to wipe the business only machine or its running spare. If the machine is older than 10 years, then I would probably plan on a new hardware build.
The machine that does everything else, that's the one I would plan, will need a wipe and fresh OS install. I have two older machines running Win 7 and they're both in kind of bad shape right now. The worst one I'm planning a new hardware build maybe late this year when the AMD Zen 4 is out. That's a motherboard, cpu, memory, drive, going in the existing top quality case and psu.
The machine that does everything else, that's the one I would plan, will need a wipe and fresh OS install. I have two older machines running Win 7 and they're both in kind of bad shape right now. The worst one I'm planning a new hardware build maybe late this year when the AMD Zen 4 is out. That's a motherboard, cpu, memory, drive, going in the existing top quality case and psu.
zbang
Senior Member
- Location
- Roughly 5346 miles from Earls Court
Y'know, I don't think I've ever needed to re-install windoze because of ill-defined crap accumulating (in 30+ years and probable over 50 machines). I have reinstalled when the drive got bad blocks in the windows directory (image the drive, install/repair the new one) but I'm not sure that counts here.
Good anti-virus software, ad-blockers, and being careful about what I click on make this possible.
Good anti-virus software, ad-blockers, and being careful about what I click on make this possible.
ptonsparky
Tom
- Occupation
- EC - retired
Not sure of the age on this laptop but its on its second drive.
- Status