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I need some computer geek help.

V8Bill

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Jon, my advice would be just use it as a data drive that you can grab and run in an emergency. All programs can be reinstalled in the event of a crash, fire, flood...etc. It's your data or created documents that are important. The SSD will be fast but only when hooked up to your comupter (board's) sub system. That is, through your motherboard as a permanent drive with internal cables. The SSD drives are very (incredibly!) fast but the USB connection will be the slow point. For this reason you won't really find it much faster than any other type of external drive.

You could install some programs to run from it (such as Office) but it won't really be of any speed or redundancy benefit. If you lose you main computer or your main hard drive (C:) fails you'll still have to reinstall your programs anyway so having them installed on your SSD external drive won't help you there. The main benefit of an external SSD drive is that it's small and easy to grab and run. So, just use it as your "My Documents" (data) area where your most precious files are. This way you have a grab-and-run copy of your files.

However, in IT we had a saying about backing up data. It needs to be in at least 3 places to be safe.

1) Your main data drive
2) a back up copy of that main data drive
3) an off site back up copy of that data drive (such as the cloud - if you trust it).

For a super speedy and redundant setup I'd suggest changing your main (or all internal drives) to SSD for your main system and all your programs to run on (because they're super fast and more or less "instant") as well as have a grab-and-run external SSD as well as a regular backup of that external grab-and-run SSD. A regular back up regime (hopefully a single click "copy all" solution) will keep your data (images, documents, photos...irreplacable stuff) on two drives. If you have a fire proof safe or an office/home/second location make sure you disconnect your 2nd emergency backup drive and store it safely every time you save data to it.

For example, you could set up a closing down routine that saves a back up of your extrenal drive to a second external drive that's stored safely either off site or in a safe. At the end of the day you unplug the back up of your documents and put them in a safe place. Do this as often as you couldn;t be bothered re-making your documents. I use this principal when saving a document that I work on as well. I save often at the end of each sentence or paragraph of a word doc or every time I do something to a photoshop file.

The pain and inconvenience of having a regular and disciplined save and back up regime is obvious and will be well appreciated the next time a power spike fries your machine, your hard drive fails (100% of hard drives will fail eventually) or your laptop's stolen...etc

HTH
 

jon.a

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I ordered a 480gb external ssd. Scandisk 510.
I'm only using about 90gb of my drive c.

I'm looking for links to simple instructions to set the new drive up. It arrives tomorrow.

Making it bootable would be nice but not critical.
I would like to run my Office 365 suite from it.

I bought it so that I have an off line portable record of my important files and correspondence.
tia
jon
 
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D

Deleted21704

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If you don't need the drive to be bootable, there probably isn't much to set up. The drive should just work upon plugging it in to your computer.

You can set up automatic file syncing between your main C drive and this new drive with a tool like Microsoft's own SyncToy or with an open-source tool called FreeFileSync.

To install Office 365 on it, looks like you'll need to make a registry tweak and run the installer again.
 

JAJT

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Jon - I'll PM you.

I'll walk you through it all.
 

jon.a

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Jon - I'll PM you.

I'll walk you through it all.
Thanks for the pm.
I haven't got it yet. It comes with some software. It might not be too tough.
 
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Bulgano

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By bootable, what exactly do you mean? Bootable to install an OS? Or bootable as in you install the OS onto the SSD so you can plug it into anything and boot into it?

They are both pretty straight-forward, the latter is a bit more involved.
The way I would do the latter (Probably not the only or easiest way);
  • Get SSD + an additional USB with 5+ GB space.
  • Download Rufus (Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way)
  • Download the ISO for whatever OS you plan on installing. (I will assume Windows)
  • Run Rufus, select the spare USB you have. Where is says "Create Bootable Disk", make sure it says ISO and select the button next to it and find your ISO file.
  • Click Start. (It should auto detect you are putting windows onto the USB and do all the other settings in the program for you)
  • Once done, plug in both USB and SSD, restart computer and boot into the USB. (This really depends on your motherboard/laptop manufacturer as the Boot/BIOS key changes. Feel free to post what brand you have and I'll give you more info. Otherwise, a simple Google Search should help you out.)
  • Install Windows by following the prompts. Select "Custom" when it asks "Upgrade or Custom". When you get to the drive selection find your external SSD and if it's greyed out, click Format with it selected. (BE SURE THIS IS YOUR SSD AND NOT YOUR MAIN HDD!)
  • Continue Windows install.
  • When finished, set it up however you like.
  • Whenever you want to boot into it, just repeat the steps you took to boot into the USB when installing, except instead of selecting the USB, select your SSD.
Hopefully, this helps out.
 

LeoistheSun

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Clonezilla. Clone your current hard disk to an external drive.

Then put in the new drive and use the cloned file to the new disk.

Old Hard drive-->Cloned File ---> New SSD
 
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jon.a

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I got it cloned. No joy on booting from it.
I think that I need to rename it "c" since that where the clone thinks the files reside. Windows won't let me rename it. I'm reading that windows 10 won't allow a USB SSD boot.
 
Last edited:

Philip Marlowe

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Likely considered, but you didn't want to use a cloud service? I've got all my files on DropBox and love it.
 

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