External HD vs SSD HD

[cascaderailroad]

I have a low end laptop that plays TRS2006 at 9 FPS ... I transferred my route to an external USB 1.0 HD and I get 9 FPS ... so I have my route on an external HD

My question is that an SSD should not be defraged, and that a regular HD can be defragged ?

How does one back up a regular HD ... On another regular external HD ?

On a SSD can a repetitive series of re-writes of a route (1000's of re-writes) on a SSD delete data after many thousands of re-writes (like on a DVD+RW, it gets lazer burnt and damaged after many re-writes) ?

 

[SailorDan]

My question is that an SSD should not be defraged, and that a regular HD can be defragged ?

Yes. SSD should not be defragged. It may be provided with optimizing software, but that is not defragging.

How does one back up a regular HD ... On another regular external HD ?

Internal HD or SSD, external HD or SSD, server, cloud, etc.

On a SSD can a repetitive series of re-writes of a route (1000's of re-writes) on a SSD delete data after many thousands of re-writes (like on a DVD+RW, it gets lazer burnt and damaged after many re-writes) ?

Yes, but the number is much higher than for optical media, and the reason is entirely different. The manufacturer should quote the lifetime of a SSD in terms of read/write cycles.

 

[wilts747]

Low end laptop and USB1 in the same sentence sort of suggests your laptop might be quite old. Unless your laptop is less than 4-5 years old there is a reasonable chance it may not support an internal SSD which tend to have SATA interfaces, older laptops have PATA interface. Likewise unless your laptop supports USB3 little will be gained from a current range of HD or SSD because the older USB ports become effectively a data bottleneck. That said whichever you may purchase would still be beneficial to any future computer upgrade. Peter.

 

[VlVisot]

...get what you can afford... SSD's are amazing, I run my OS on an SSD and i store my games on an HDD. If you've never used an SSD before, i recommend giving it a try.. but for a games storage drive, just go with an HDD.

 

[Christopher824]

With Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10....

Your SSD's file system sometimes needs a kind of defragmentation and that's handled by Windows, monthly by default, when appropriate. The intent is to maximize performance and a long life. If you disable defragmentation completely, you are taking a risk that your filesystem metadata could reach maximum fragmentation and get you potentially in trouble.

See the whole article HERE

 

[JCitron]

The new external hard drives, such as those Seagate Desk-series drives, work quite well as long as your machine has a USB 3.0 interface to allow for a quick connection speed. In addition to the USB 3.0 connection, the controller for these drives is a bit different than just a hard drive in an external case attached to a USB interface. The drive case actually has a type of SCSI controller inside rather than just a SATA connection with a USB connection on the other end.

This combination is quite fast and makes the external drive quite usable on modern laptops and those desktops with limited internal storage space.

Recently, with my dad spending last Tuesday in hospital for minor surgery, I had my Alienware laptop with me along with a spare Seagate Desk-series 4TB hard drive. The internal drives on the laptop hold a good amount of data, but they are still much smaller than what I have in Trainz data and wanted to use T:ANE as I wasn't sure if the network would be good enough to connect to Steam for my other games. As it was the network wasn't bad, good enough to connect to My Trainz, and email, so I did the right thing.

Anyway the access time proved to be quite good with no more delays than what I see with my internal hard drives on my desktop. Going forward this is the way I will go with my laptop.