SD Card as storage

[TimStevensNL]

Hello,

 

I have laptop with a normal 2,5" HDD. I want to upgrade it so a SSD. The best option would be a 1TB SSD or atleast 500GB SSD. The problem is: its expensive. 
Now i thought: can i use a SD card where i would put all my documents, photo's, music etc. and just buy a 120GB SSD for the software? I have 2TB of cloudstorage for all the files and documents for my company so that won't be a problem.
Do you think its possible?

 

Thanks in advance!
Tim

[Oshino Shinobu]

Possible? Yes. A good idea? No. SD Cards are a terrible form of storage for long term use. Their advantage is the small size and low weight, making them good for portable devices. In terms of long term storage, they are too fragile and unreliable to use. A large USB drive would be a better solution, but still not a great one. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Turn the HDD into an external hard drive using an enclosure.

 

You could use an SD card, but keep in mind it may not be as fast as your HDD.

[TimStevensNL]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Possible? Yes. A good idea? No. SD Cards are a terrible form of storage for long term use. Their advantage is the small size and low weight, making them good for portable devices. In terms of long term storage, they are too fragile and unreliable to use. A large USB drive would be a better solution, but still not a great one. 

Thanks! I recently bought a mini pci-e to usb converter because i had a extra mini pci-e port in my laptop. If i put a good SanDisk USB drive in it, will it be reliable?

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, TimStevensNL said:

Hello,

 

I have laptop with a normal 2,5" HDD. I want to upgrade it so a SSD. The best option would be a 1TB SSD or atleast 500GB SSD. The problem is: its expensive. 
Now i thought: can i use a SD card where i would put all my documents, photo's, music etc. and just buy a 120GB SSD for the software? I have 2TB of cloudstorage for all the files and documents for my company so that won't be a problem.
Do you think its possible?

 

Thanks in advance!
Tim

Yes, easily...

Should you, NOPE!

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, TimStevensNL said:

Thanks! I recently bought a mini pci-e to usb converter because i had a extra mini pci-e port in my laptop. If i put a good SanDisk USB drive in it, will it be reliable?

Not really. USB drives and other portable storage devices are designed more for temporary storage than long term usage, especially if you're going to be moving data to and from the drive like you would with an internal drive. While it will work, it is not designed for the workload of a dedicated internal drive, so should not be used as a replacement for one. There is a reason internal SSDs are more expensive than USB drives, such as speed, reliability, write cycles, quality of the NAND and controller etc. etc.

 

Probably the best solution would be to buy an external HDD and use that for mass storage, with a 128GB or 250GB (I would go for 250GB, 128GB can be small for an OS + software drive) SSD. 

[TimStevensNL]

I have all my documents and files in the cloud, everything. It syncs to my local storage (in this case my HDD) and can be downloaded in a couple minutes. That means that if the SD card or USB drive crashes i will still have ALL my files in the cloud. And everything i want to have on my SSD, can be put on my SSD. Does that change the case?

[TimStevensNL]

Oh, and i ordered a 2,5" HDD enclosure to go in the DVD drive slot on my laptop. So that means i can have a second harddrive if i need it. 

[TimStevensNL]

 Good news!

 

So, i ordered a 2,5" 1TB Seagate SSHD at a big international "buy, sell & exchange" store, called CeX (WeBuy). But... They did send me a wrong product. They sent me a Seagate 1TB 3,5" normal HDD. I contacted them and they said: Return it, and choose something else.
I did that and what did i buy instead of that: Samsung SSD 850 120GB!
The storage is much smaller than what i like but its a full SSD and i'm happy with my choice. Because of you, the 'repliers', i tested a 128GB micro-SD. And just like you said, its unbelievably slow! So, what did i order:  

This way i can put another 320GB or 640GB HDD in my laptop so i have enough storage.

[Teddy07]

did you consider buying a used SSD?

 

I am currently watching the SSD auctions on ebay for a week now because i want to buy one for my laptop.

[TimStevensNL]

1 hour ago, Teddy07 said:

did you consider buying a used SSD?

 

I am currently watching the SSD auctions on ebay for a week now because i want to buy one for my laptop.

Well, the SSHD i wanted aswell as the SSD i ordered now is used and checked by that store.