"Cheap" 2TB SSD?

Upgrade video cause I don't want to get it wrong.
As example if the back is just pulled up with that laptop, bits of plastic get broken. Just want to be very sure I remove the right screws, all the right screws, and ONLY the right screws.

The laptop is already looking somewhat damaged because daughter let her mums boyfriend at it. He or some clueless mate tried to lever it off without removing a screw under a label. Then left daughter for weeks with the claim it needed a new motherboard.
Grr. Had to buy a cheap extra house laptop just so he will leave hers alone. Old Sony so it should be durable...least as long as it ain't used as ammunition.

Anyway this will be my second 2tb + win 10 install. A lenovo Y70-50 with 4k 15 inch screen, which is a lot more fragile than the original version Zbook 17 tank I bought and upgraded for her last week. Still I have to admit that her choice of laptop weighs in at about half of what I got her.

Why would I partition the SSD? Standard practice is to let the win 10 install do its thing. I would rather not do anything non-standard without enough benefit to justify additional brain straining.
Rufus looks interesting but I still have my backup portable HD set with win 10 install from last week. It seemed to be all I needed so I will go with what works.

 

These days laptops are optimised for kids who skip food and can't even carry proper laptop along with books. That's why macbook airs were invented as ultra-portable. My sis can't even carry my current laptop and often term it as a rock and even my classmates say it can be used as a working out when someone skips Gym.

 

Arrrgggg.

SSD instalation went well. Was looking at perhaps wrong video yesterday. Right video easy peasy.
SDD looks to be perfect.
Windows 10 loaded without a hitch.

That was the good new. Now for the bad.

Somebody treated the back cover horribly. Bent metal & cracked plastic. 2 screws no longer function.
The internet connection is showing barely connecting. No bars where my Dell with its notoriously poor reception shows full bars. Suspect aerial connection malfunction.
The Screen has lost a small strip across the bottom. Checking video driver but not much belief here. Some hope that connections to the lid are loose.

Update 1: Started downloading drivers but not much happened. Took laptop into room with internet box. Video card utility arrived and screen suddenly works properly. Can now downgrade 4k screen to 1080p with a sigh of relief. Still suspect an aerial fault, but that is a plausible repair. Not planing to reopen the box till all hope of fix by driver update is gone.

Update 2: Still no idea whats with the internet range. Downloaded Calibre fast from non-internet room but no other internet signals spotted & no bars. Going to start a separate thread asking for help. Daughter in no rush to get laptop back so will ask questions first, tare laptop apart looking for perhaps non-fault a distant second.

Update 3: Quick look inside but cables seem to be attached. Going to plan B: Get drunk (1 can, I am a cheep drunk), eat, read a book, sleep n hope for divine inspiration tomorrow..

Update 4. Searched the net. It's the £$£$% modem. Not broken just too outdated to handle the internet box properly. Ordered a new one that isn't meant to work in a lenovo but I think should. Sigh. One more week before I find out what sort of idiot I am. And if that don't work perhaps a month to get an inferior but official part from china.

Anybody still wondering why I do these things in the morning when I am least likely to panic?

 

Vasudev

Yep me n daughter have very different tastes in laptops. She wants thin 15 inch games machines. I vote for solid business machines with slow processors, nothing much of a video card and a 17 inch 1080p high contrast touch screen. Solid, quiet, dependable keyboard & won't cook my knees. The Zbook was a compromise. Solidity of a top end business machine with the power of a games machine bar the outdated video card.

You should have heard her scream when I sent her off to uni with a rather weighty Sony i7 way back when. Not the most delicate of laptops. 4 years later the guts still worked but the hinges failed. I know that college students can tell the difference between a laptop and a football but it didn't add to the proof.

 

While off topic I too used to be a lover of laptops as DTR's. Now since stuck in the lounge chair I like the 1080P 14:". While I would have loved a 2.5" SATA the M.2 is fine for the device. I was thing about a 2TB 660P but the included 256GB for now is fine.

 

Tanware

Golden rule - If it ain't broke don't fix it.
If the 256GB is big enough then sit back n enjoy.
Day comes you are out of room the prices will have dropped and you can snigger bout what we paid now.

 

First time owning a pure gaming laptop, I nearly cooked my eggs and my population extender production engine went offline for few days! I hope my factory works in the long run w/o needing any cybernetic parts to jumpstart the creation of a beautiful & amazing products.

 

The main reason to upgrade is the stock drive is M.2 SATA and not nVme. While the system is pretty snappy as is a faster drive would be nice. The reason for a 2 TB drive is since it is the only bay, why not go big.

 

Honestly not convinced that a faster drive always saves time. There is the time spent figuring out what to buy, then installation, then the additional work to pay for it.
But there is this. Hard disks crap out all too often. My daughter wasted weeks before getting me in to sort out problems. Now that is a slowdown that counts.

In short it really isn't about the seconds saved but the hours and days lost that you should plan for..

My two laptops are still HD powered and likely to remain so. But then I am old enough not to care. Also wise enough to back up and have a spare laptop even if that means nether is state of the art.

 

The reason for SSD's in a computer primarily is the instantaneous response they tend to provide. The large drives offer better longevity of the NAND, usually more speed, more space making it easier to maintain etc..

For consumers this speed increase and lowered response time is the drive behind better interfaces. Now inn the days where only one or so slow ad appeared on a web page a slower SATA drive was fine. Now it is almost a necessity for a Gigabit connection and a raided nVme of huge capacity.

Agreed that it usually is more a luxury than need, I like my luxuries!

 

If you know how to do a system image, then it really should not take that much time, save for an hour.

There are plenty of laptops that are built like gaming machines on the inside, but have solid business quality in build with magnesium steel frames. I suppose it depends on what you want to spend and know what to look for.

 

Off hand I know of only two high powered, well engineered, 17 inch screen, business machines that would turn up at a reasonable budget. The HP Zbook and the dell M6800. Both long in the tooth so not much video power. Not much in it but the Zbook a tad cheaper and top rate build. Try to get it all n you are talking thousands. My spend for the Zbook was £530 including the already installed 32GB ram, my 2tb SSD upgrade and all transport. Trust me. That much money really hurt. Never ever spent as much on one laptop.

 

Which is why I use the Ranger.

Function is more important than form to me.

I spent maybe 2-3 times that on my Ranger because of trials and tribulations but I feel as if I know the machine well, has many spare parts and still has plenty of performance 6 years after release. I can probably get about 3-5 more years of use from this machine.

That all being said, you can get the P5000 working in the m6700/m6800. Still quite modern for the last Gen to have socketed cpu's

 

Ah. But their lies the worry. Note that you did't mention the m6600.
It is in the proud company of the Alienware r2.
Both really expensive laptops made by dell.
Both powerful enough to take on most of the current crop of laptops....
And finally both useless because dell isn't releasing Windows 10 drivers.

Dell makes machines to last......but perhaps only as long as they want.

 

M6600 is nice and all, but is limited to Sandy/Kepler, both ageing archs with both at the end of true driver support. IMO The 8760W-Zbook 17 are better buys than the M6700, as they can be upgraded successfully to Pascal while the M6700 is limited to ES VBIOS versions of the incredibly expensive P5000, no clue about the M6800 but it seems to be in the same league.

As for drivers, what driver could you possibly need that isn't available?

 

I didn't mention the m6600 because it's potential is finite. We know it's limits. The bios on that platform was terrible in comparison and that's why the limits are far less than the next two generations after it.

Also I don't use Dell drivers, probably never will either. Limiting yourself to odm compiled drivers is like a one legged race with a bag of rocks. You can always get the up to date drivers from the manufacturer generally, and work better for it.

The only time this may be an issue now is when getting wlan drivers as Intel removed or simply made difficult to source the older wifi card drivers last I saw.

 

Grant B Gibson

Not really sure what drivers. Just know that those two laptops can't handle windows 10. That was the end of my need to research.
But now you tell me that the Zbook can use Pascal I am going to have to figure out WTF it is. In my day it was a really lame programming language. Lame because it was C without the following.

Ahhh... looked it up. Its a GPU. I am very much not going to tell my daughter bout that upgrade. The whole exercise was to set her up with a reliable laptop system for business & study. Best I can tell both laptops have GPU's that won't let them down for anything likely there.

Besides I already guilt tripped myself into buying her a Playstation 4. New too, which is almost unheard of for me. Naturally now it also needs repair but I rebelled. Her boyfriend is a Playstation fanatic and a mechanical engineer. His turn I recon.

Later: Dear gods. Upgrading to SSD need careful panic management for me. Just checked out what is involved in upgrading a notebook GPU. Still trying to control the shaking.

Still Later: Double checked. Looks like both the M6600 and the Alienware r2 probably can run Windows 10. It is just that a lot of owners failed to find the right drivers due to lack of Dell support.
Not sure all the niggles can be solved but looks plausible.

Interesting. Both of them could very well turn up cheap.

TheReciever

Um. Odd thing you might have noticed about me. I am not very forgiving. If a company fails to support its old products then I am going to assume they will do no better with the new. I mentioned the M6600 because it questioned how long the M6800 will receive support.

 

Look up windows update catalog for drivers for win 7/8/10 for any laptop or tablet or anything windows.

 

IMO,SSDs like many other thing fall under "you get what you pay for".

I have 5 Samsung 860 from 500GB to 2TB and all have worked without any issues and two 970 Pro NVMe.The 1st couple 860s are from when they were first available.All see close to daily average read/write small file usage.

My newest SSD is a 500GB Crucial MX500 that has been secure erased/and reset up as simple volume 3 times in 3 months of ownership due to constant scans for errors and the drive completely disappearing from file explorer.

I regularly run these commands as admin;

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

sfc /scannow

Both need to return a completed successfully message to show the windows image and the file system are in good order.

 

Mx500 disappearing from file explorer? My 850 evo disappeared from BIOS main screen but gets detected in Windows. Really odd case.

 

WhatsThePoint

Ouch. Um is that 500GB Crucial MX500 not under warranty?
It really hasn't a bad reputation.

If something intermittently disappeared from explorer I would think it disconnecting.
So any possibility of a poor physical installation or dirty contacts?

With that many SSD's I have to ask if it is even in your machine?
If not the the cable connections might not be totally secure. I certainly don't trust my USB connections.

If unsure you could try swapping the drives and see if the faults follow the drive or stay with the connection

 

Some PC makers whitelist only specific SSDs to work sometimes in early BIOS and take those limits once BIOS is latest and greatest before EOL.

 

Vasudev

True. But if the SSD was whitelisted I would not expect it to appear at all.
Bios bugs however are always possible. Getting the latest bios & drivers is worth trying.
Still, the point is if explorer can't find a drive you have to seriously consider that it might be telling the truth - in that the drive is simply not physically connected. And that can only mean a dodgy connection.

After some thought:

Kinda doubt it's the computer's bios. As far as it is concerned the drive is just another SATA Hard Disk or perhaps USB drive. The Mx500 is a popular well established product. If it's bios or driver was duff we should have heard the screams. That really does leave some sort of dodgy software that really shouldn't be necessary - like maybe a disk cache, or a loose connection. That connection could be an internal dry joint but let's hope for a loose cable or simple dirt.

More thought. Probably not software. A disk cache or such would explain the corruption but I am having trouble believing that it could hide the drive from explorer.