L8: upgrading to SSD information request..

Windows 10 system.
I want to switch to SSD from HDD.

The system is new, but I have been using it for half a year, and can just now afford to upgrade to SSD. Maybe.

I know the least expensive way to do this is to swap drives and reinstall everything, but this is too impractical. What utility or tool (or special hardware) do you all use to mirror drives? suggestions?

Find more posts tagged with

Desktop App

Comments

Brent Hoefling

okay - so good news for me. I discovered that my laptop supports a PCIe SSD (in addition to the hdd installed). I can live with reinstalling L8. now I just need to find out which model SSC card it supports... (Current space requirement is 94gig)

Mark Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088471#Comment_1088471

Brent, I recently upgraded the size of my SSD. Doing so required mirroring my original drive. I had a Samsung drive and purchased another one. Samsung has downloadable software that makes the work easy. I suspect other drive manufacturers have something similar.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

What utility or tool (or special hardware) do you all use to mirror drives? suggestions?

One free suggestion for Windows is clonezilla (free disk cloning, disk imaging, data recovery, and deployment).

FYI: for mac OS, suggest using Apple's Disk Utility OR mac OS installer with migration assistance.

Keep Smiling [:)]

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088474#Comment_1088474

Brent, I recently upgraded the size of my SSD. Doing so required mirroring my original drive. I had a Samsung drive and purchased another one. Samsung has downloadable software that makes the work easy. I suspect other drive manufacturers have something similar.

I second this. Samsung's Data Migration software is very simple to use and moves everything over for you without issue. You might need to get an adapter to plug your Samsung drive into your USB port to make the transfer.

I buy these drives and this adapter.

You simply plug the drive into the adapter and then into the USB port. Download the Data Migration Tool from here and install it. Run the tool and wait. Once the tool completes, you simply swap the drives and you're done!

Brent Hoefling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088529#Comment_1088529

Thank you all for the suggestions! I already have the SATA to USB adaptor, and will use that if I need to, later.

As noted, I discovered that my laptop supports PCIe SSD in addition to the SATA device (currently an HDD). My plan is to install L8 on the SSD (secondary drive, not the C: boot/OS drive).

I am getting a 1TB PCIe Gen4 X4 NVMe 1.3 (that the unit supports), and could even transfer the OS to that drive, but I didn't see any reason - IF, and here is the next question, but first a historical comment/note: I have installed Logos to a different drive letter in the past, but not with L8. I ASSUME it can be done.

the question: assuming it can be done (run L8 on the drive), should the performance increase remain the same, even though the OS is on a different drive?

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088534#Comment_1088534

My plan is to install L8 on the SSD (secondary drive, not the C: boot/OS drive).

If it will allow you to install L8 on the secondary drive, you will still not get the benefits of the SSD. You want your OS to be on the SSD as well, and L8 will have to access the OS in order to run, so all of those reads will slow down L8, not to mention the fact that you will be losing out on the general performance gain from having your OS on the SSD. There is really no reason not to do it this way. It will be easier to follow the steps I outlined than to try to move your L8 installation to a second drive. I can't see any benefit at all to trying to install the secondary SSD as opposed to cloning the one you have now and switching it out, but you will get huge benefits from the simple swap out.

Brent Hoefling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088546#Comment_1088546

I don't see why? the OS is already running.
the L8 resources and indexing and application runs from the secondary drive. I have done this before on a different computer and with l6/l7. so your telling me that L* is that much different and will not speed up? I need a better explanation on how it is different than previous versions.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088552#Comment_1088552

1. Just because your OS is running does not mean that it is finished accessing the drive. Your OS accesses files constantly, particularly when you open a program or run something that has dependencies in the OS itself. Windows apps are not run in a sandbox like Mac apps. They all use common files that are accessed from the OS.

2. Why would you not want all of your other programs to run faster as well? I'm not sure why you are determined that Windows itself, Office, Adobe, Music and Video Programs, etc... shouldn't benefit from the SSD as well.

3. Again, if it was easier to simply add the second drive, then I might agree with you, but that option is not easier than the other, and you certainly benefit from all of your programs on the SSD more than not.

Having all of your programs on the SSD will make a SIGNIFICANT difference in performance across the board.

Brent Hoefling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088561#Comment_1088561

1. and how much of that is happening with a L8 system launch/run?

2. because I am not having any issues with anything else running, it's all quite fast.

3. it is a simple matter of just adding the second drive. I can only afford to get a 1tb ssd. if I "swap" the OS and apps to it, I will ONLY have a few hundred gig left. the system is relatively new, and I need it to last for at least several more years.

I really don't care about the other apps having any increase in performance - as I mentioned, they all run very, very quickly now. I am not having any performance issues with anything else. Even L8 runs great - except when I launch it and it may take some time to get through the "Preparing the Library" (initial splash screen for 10-20 seconds) and the initial blue circle with the "1" in it that says "Preparing Library..." (that takes several minutes).

first-world-problems, I know - I especially remember the old days of logos/libronix

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088563#Comment_1088563

1. It is a simple fact that an SSD will provide a considerable speed advantage to the entire system.

2. If given two choices, with equal difficulty, and one would considerably speed up your system, I assumed you would go with that one.

3. You said your current need was 94GB, so a TB would give you over 900GB of free space. Maybe you were saying your Logos library is 94GB.

But it sounds like you know what you want to do. Hope it works like you want!

Brent Hoefling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088571#Comment_1088571

94g for l8 only, not for the rest of the programs/data.
equal difficulty? that is what I am trying to find out - it appears so far that is NOT the case.

Brent Hoefling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088589#Comment_1088589

Thanks for everyone's help.

First to JT - since I didn't use Samsung hardware the software didn't work. I was hoping, but no. I had a time-consuming challenge even getting my laptop manufacturer to verify what was supported for the PCIe SSD. so it was taking me a lot longer than I was anticipating.

since I had invested so much time already, and was between "holds" on many calls, I researched a couple other drive manufacturers that I was hoping to get (but needed the confirmation from the laptop manufacture what was supported), and they had their own software. One use some shareware thing.

I ended up using a Seagate SSD, and their software was much more comprehensive, and their cloning process was supposed to be dynamic and proportional. (there were a few partitions for various reasons on the laptop manufacturer install.

again, since I was already waaaay past the quick fix I was really hoping to get for L8, I went ahead and cloned the main partition, and the diagnostics partition. I left the OS backup and apps partitions off the new SSD since I always make a USB bootable thumb drive with all that recovery data/files when I get a new system.

meat and potatoes: after following their FAQ (Seagate) and their discktools PDF instructions, I went through with the cloning of the drive (it left the main HDD in tact completely). This process took a while, and I ended up leaving it run overnight - something I never do otherwise with a laptop.

I woke up to a message that essentially told be to shutdown, remove the source drive and the destination would now be the primary. I did as instructed and viola!!! my computer wouldn't boot. it had some bitlocker error!

aughghghgh - now gotta spend even more time troubleshooting, and I have class in a bit, so took the SSD out and replaced the HDD. and guess what?!?!? yeahp - it wouldn't boot either! bitlocker error!!

After more research and panicking time spent moments before class started, I was able to get a recovery key off my Microsoft live account (fortunately I had one) and got the HDD working.

when I had a break, I tried the SDD again, and it was bitlockered, and went through the same process to "recover" it. now after all that - I am now, finally, running on a SDD. not a process for the squeemish, faint of heart, or for anyone that has time constraints.

KS4J - that was the tool that one of the drive manufacturers suggested, and seemed to be very convoluted, BUT had very specific step by step instructions.

MS - in my research of a few manufacturers, they all seemed to have different approaches to the same issue, but they all (that I looked into) had something to offer, even if it wasn't internally developed.

So, again, thank you all. Maybe someone can learn something from my mistakes.

Brent Hoefling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1088752#Comment_1088752

Final report on performance:

I wanted to give an update on performance of L8 on my new SSD. Since I forced myself into swapping and not just running L8 on the new drive alone, I don't have any report for running it on a separate SSD.

I wasn't sure of the best way to report a practical, pragmatic update on performance. "snappier" isn't really quantifiable and Read and write speeds are not really appropriate for the average L8 user either. So I am going with an activity, that I believe everyone has struggled with at one point or another as it seems to take the longest amount of time for everyone: a full index rebuild.

So, unfortunately, my baseline has never really be measured precisely because it did take so long. I will give a general number so that it can be compared to the SSD as a practical experience. With the HDD it took nearly 12 hours to do a full index rebuild. Again, I don't know exactly, but I had to plan for this by knowing that I wasn't going to need the system for a class or other activity for a day. I would typically start the rebuild before I went to bed, and it was roughly 75% when I went to work the next morning. and completed when I got home.

With the SSD, it was much faster, but, well, I lost track of how long it took, as I was distracted by a couple episodes of ST-DS9, tonight. I can tell you for sure that the full rebuild took just over 2 hours. Not bad. and as someone says - that is my experience and my experience is based on my hardware and I tried to make a fair comparison. so here is the data for the ~12 hours reduced to over 2 hours for a full rebuild of the index:

Win10 (latest updates and builds available)
Dell Inspirion 7000 series (i7) laptop (Tablet PC 2-in-one)
16 gig RAM
HDD, Seagate 2tb 2.5" SATA initial drive
SDD, destination drive Seagate 520 1tb PCIe drive
L8 with full updates and 27.3k resources.

Thank you for your patience, I really didn't mean to make this into a big deal, but as I noted already, I hope someone can learn from my mistakes. I am very impressed by the noticeable (yes, really noticeable, and perceptible performance increase, and not just based on a stopwatch quantification) performance enhancement. with the rising availability of SSD's and their costs getting lower all the time, I highly suggest having your computer run from an SSD.

thanks for your time,
pastor brent
ssd