SSD troubles

quorgi · February 6, 2023

I bought a prebuilt PC in 2020 (i.e. someone handed me a list of things to put in it, I obliged) and was not told where to put files explicitly. So me being Big Brain decided 'oh this has so much space put everything on here', here being the SSD, and as it was it was fine for a while. About a year and change ago, while playing games, the screen would suddenly freeze and get filled with noise, and I would have to force shut down everything which looking at it now, probably made the problem worse.

When I got the chance to take it in after moving, the tech guy at staples said my SSD is working way too hard. He then quoted me $250 to change out the SSD and do a memory transfer. I'm a reasonable guy, but $200 for labor sounded excessive (he gave me a specific SSD rec for $50), and I figured that with the right direction I could do a transfer myself.

I'm not super tech minded, I've tried looking up a solution to my issues on my own but can't get a solid lead on where to begin, or even if what I have already inside my PC for storage is worth replacing or upgrading. I figured asking people more familiar than I would be the best place to start on how I go about doing this. Relevant (?) specs below

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6GHz [4.4GHz Turbo] 8 Cores/ 16 Threads 36MB Cache 65W Processor
FAN: CyberPowerPC DEEPCOOL Castle 240EX ARGB 240mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooling System w/ Copper Cold Plate [+20] (4 x Standard 120MM Fans [+10])
HDD: 240GB WD Green SSD + 3TB SATA III Hard Drive Combo [+19] (Combo Drive)
HDD2: None
IUSB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
MEMORY: 16GB (8GBx2) DDR4/3000MHz Dual Channel Memory (ADATA XPG Z1)
MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE X570 UD ATX GbE LAN, 3 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe x1, 6 SATA3, 1 M.2 SATA/PCIe
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
OS: Windows 10 Home (64-bit Edition)
OVERCLOCK: No Overclocking
POWERSUPPLY: 600 Watts - Standard 600Watts 80 Plus Gold high-efficient Power Supply
VIDEO: AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 XT 8GB GDDR6 PCIe 4.0 [Navi] (Single Card)

FloRolf · February 6, 2023

Loading everything to a new ssd is really easy and can be done rather quickly. I did it a few times with a tool made by Samsung called Migration something something. You just install both drives and the select the one you want to clone to the new drive. It transfers windows and all the files and then just works.

However I would always suggest to install windows and everything on the new ssd from scratch to avoid any issues with the windows install and to actually get a fresh start.

191x7 · February 6, 2023

There isn't a thing called "SSD working too hard". It can be filled too much (you have to have at least 20% free on an SSD! more is better) or have a lot of read/writes (that could decrease the life span).

Know what? Do "Disk Cleanup" from Windows, bot the regular and the "clean system files" option, for everything. Then theck the drive using Hard Disk Sentinel.

Report here.