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Question

New Laptop Advice (upgrade laptop ssd or use external hdd?)

May 30, 2016 4:44AM PDT

Hi, this is my first post on Cnet (or on any forum for the best part of 4-5 years!). So hi!

Having not had a laptop or pc for the best part of 5-6 years you might say I am a bit rusty so I need some guidance and advice in how is best for me to manage my new laptop.

I have recently bought an ASUS UX305CA at a steal for £450 BNIB (8GB RAM 128GB SSD) I have to say, I absolutely love it.

I bought it mainly for work purposes (will be using mainly excel spreadsheets, word and PDF files) but will also use to browse the net, watch videos, Netflix, save pics on etc. I don't plan on running any large creative or labour intensive programmes like Photoshop or any music programmes like I have previously (Pro Tools) so it won't be doing anything too intensive.

My query is: with such a small ssd I am wary that saving too many files on the laptop will slow it down considerably, so is it better for me to buy a larger ssd (256/512GB?) or buy an external hdd (500GB) and save all my files to the hdd and keep the ssd for operational purposes? I considered a flash drive but am not sure if that would suffice. If I buy a 256GB ssd and still save files to an external drive will it increase performance or will it not be noticed? I feel it's a bit of a faff (inconvenience) having to have a hdd dangling around all the time but I want to look after this investment so want to make the right decision from the get go.

I appreciate any input!

Thanks in advance.

M

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: saving many files
May 30, 2016 4:52AM PDT

Saving many files doesn't slow down your laptop. And external hard disks, especially if taken with you all day, are rather unreliable, so having 2 backup copies can be considered the minimum then.

My advice: don't do anything until you run out of disc space. Then buy a larger SSD and clone your current SSD to it (enlarge the partition after copying).

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Re: Re: saving many files
May 30, 2016 5:01AM PDT

Thanks Kees_B,

So you're saying not to bother with an external hdd, only use one for backup purposes? It's safe for me to save data on the ssd?

Would it not be better for me to just buy a larger ssd now? Is the procedure of cloning complicated? Would I need to re-install/buy Windows 10 again?

Thanks.

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Keep it simple
May 30, 2016 8:38AM PDT