158
votes
Accepted
Disadvantages of partitioning an SSD?
SSDs do not, I repeat, do NOT work at the filesystem level!
There is no 1:1 correlation between how the filesystem sees things and how the SSD sees things.
Feel free to partition the SSD any way you ...
- 1,946
87
votes
Why is my HDD so slow on the "4K" speed tests?
What you are running into is typical of mechanical HDDs, and one of the major benefits of SSDs: HDDs have terrible random access performance.
In CrystalDiskMark, "Seq" means sequential access while "...
- 62k
69
votes
Accepted
How much slower do SSDs get as they fill up or age?
As Bob mentioned in the comments, a lot has changed about SSDs in recent years. There's a few key technologies which fixed early performance issues. The tl;dr is don't worry about it, buy an SSD, the ...
- 2,216
69
votes
What's faster? Moving files from one drive to another, or moving files in the same drive?
It depends on a bit more than just the physical hardware layout. In general, there are four cases to consider:
Moving a file within a single filesystem (IOW, within a single ‘drive’ by the Windows ...
- 9,901
66
votes
Accepted
How can a hard drive provide a host device with file/directory listings when the drive isn't spinning?
Caching.
Both the operating system and drive have caches that buffer recently used drive data. If data is in the cache then it does not need to go direct to the disk platter.
Directory listing data ...
- 93.8k
60
votes
Confusion with storage capacity (powers of 10 and 2)
The historical reason of using powers of 2 is that memory and hard disk are accessed by the CPU using an address space composed of lines on binary code. Hardware producers decided the names in this ...
- 17.6k
40
votes
Accepted
Cannot `cd` to E: drive using Windows CMD command line
Using cd/chdir you cannot change the current working directory (CWD) to one on a different drive unless first switching drives (2 steps) or including the /d switch as part of your command (1 step).
cd ...
- 3,184
39
votes
Why should I use exFAT over NTFS on removable media?
NTFS has journaling which helps ensure the file system can recover from corruption, whereas exFAT does not. So if you use the drive only from Windows PCs and reliability and data integrity are ...
- 1,437
28
votes
Accepted
Are M-disks truly more reliable than other forms of storage?
A theoretical lifespan of 1000 years is actually not that big. Factory-produced CD-ROMs which were replicated from a master-disk are expected to last for 100 years or more, but of course you cannot ...
- 9,467
27
votes
How much slower do SSDs get as they fill up or age?
Unless you plan on moving terabytes of data at a time, the impact would be negligible. Even at queue depth 32, which you would never see unless you are a workstation or sever user, the effects only ...
- 373
24
votes
How is a NAS different from a SAN?
Isn't a NAS basically just a small SAN?
Summary:
A NAS is a single server usually connected by Ethernet to a LAN, and usually provides file level access
A SAN usually provides block level access, t
...
- 159k
23
votes
Confusion with storage capacity (powers of 10 and 2)
In short: it was all about marketing.
jcbermu explained well, but I don't agree to the reasons behind all of that.
While any informatics system uses the binary system, the bits & bytes are ...
- 10.2k
21
votes
Accepted
Can you just "pull the plug" on MTP devices?
When you plug in a USB mass storage device, it gives the host computer undifferentiated access to the mass storage.
It assumes absolute control over the file system similar to that of a hard drive.
...
- 1,532
20
votes
Immediately spin down a HDD on Windows
Since you are familiar with Linux, stick to the smartctl command-line utility of smartmontools. You can spin down disks with the -s switch.
From the man page:
-s NAME[,VALUE], --set=NAME[,VALUE]
...
- 446
19
votes
Space issues on 32 GB Windows 10 mini PC
The Windows feature updates will consume approximately 3-5GB once ready to install, but the download of the feature update itself is done via Windows update and can consume a lot more in preparation ...
- 93.8k
17
votes
Accepted
Expand a Linux MD RAID 10 array to use larger disks
Complete the following steps for each disk; replace /dev/sda1 with other disks as necessary. You must complete all of these steps for one disk before you can proceed to the next disk.
Mark the disk ...
- 46.2k
16
votes
Confusion with storage capacity (powers of 10 and 2)
jcbermu's answer is good, but I want to approach this from a different angle.
1GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes (powers of 10) and 1,073,741,824 bytes (powers of 2), then: it shows less storage capacity (...
- 30k
16
votes
Accepted
How can I make a hard drive copy its contents to another hard drive in real time?
Raid mirroring of the drives (RAID 1) would accomplish this easily, there are other ways however I'm not familiar enough with them to attempt to explain how to manage it.
- 6,803
14
votes
What medium should be used for long term, high volume, data storage (archival)?
Quick follow-up on my previous answer above, this will be made more concise and extended with additional (but not of primary importance) information and references that I cannot add in the first ...
- 2,033
14
votes
How can I make a hard drive copy its contents to another hard drive in real time?
If you use Windows 2000 or up, you can create 1 mirrored partition that spans 2 or more drives, where data written to this one partition is stored on those disks simultaneously.
In order to do this, ...
- 62.5k
13
votes
Can an SD-XC card have ≤32 GB and still be standards compliant?
The SD association states that an SDXC card has more than 32GB capacity on their website: SDcard.org
This seems to indicate that a smaller card isn't an SDXC card. Of course, the change from SD to ...
- 626
13
votes
Accepted
Can an SD-XC card have ≤32 GB and still be standards compliant?
Yes, technically
There are three separate things conflated here:
The protocol (the SD Physical Layer specification that applies - now up to v6.0) implemented by the SD to NAND flash controller chip
...
- 362
13
votes
Accepted
Why you can't just "dd" CD Audio like an ordinary data CD?
Audio CDs (also called CD-DA, specified in the proprietary Red Book) are the oldest format of the CD. The format is inspired by the audio record, so you have a spiral track with continuous data, and ...
- 17k
12
votes
Is it possible to use a NAS to host videos?
The rough, practical short answer is "Yes but" . The long answer is a bit more complex.
A NAS does just what the name implies "Network Attached Storage" - ie its just a store of ...
- 71.4k
10
votes
How is a NAS different from a SAN?
Wiki SAN
Wiki NAS - this has a whole section on the difference(s)
A SAN usually provides block level access. So it looks like an actual HDD to a system using technologies like iSCSI. While NAS ...
- 9,213
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible