I finally had time to look into a bluescreen crash that I have been having over the past few months. I called DELL and they told me that my hard drive is failing, so they are sending out a tech to replace it, however, it seems that the drive it was built with, and the one under warranty isn’t an SSD, but a regular hard drive. The company I purchased from must have changed it to an SSD. How much will I regret not just getting my own SSD and replace it myself? The replacement from DELL will cost me nothing, so I was going to give it a try to see if I notice anything I can’t live with.
These are the two drives I have in my order, so he is sending out both and the tech is going to replace the boot drive.
HDD, 300GB, 512b, SAS, 15K RPM, 2.5 inch, 64MB, Seagate, Yellowjacket
HDD, 900GB, 512b, SAS6, 10K RPM, 2.5 inch, 64MB, Seagate, Ironman, (Enterprise Class, Jun Block 2013)
The smaller is faster, but my current SSD is 1TB, so I will need the slower one; I currently have 500GB of data on my SSD.
Spinning drives are very slow by the current market standards, even at 15k RPM like the SAS drives you mentioned above.
Your old Sata SSD is faster than these, and you will be able to tell the difference(unless your old SSD had issues)…
I really think that an NVMe SSD for your OS and applications, is very essential. It will make huge difference in Max’s autosave, startup of your OS and applications and many other things
An NVMe drive is 7 times faster than a Sata SSD(your old drive) and it is like 20-25 times faster than the SAS drives that they will install in your systems.
1 TB NVMe drive is like 200 pounds or so(definitely worth it).. like this one here,
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-V-NAND-Express-Solid-State/dp/B07CGJNLBB/ref=sr\_1\_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1544539691&sr=1-2&keywords=970+evo
Your board doesn’t seem to have an NVMe slot, so you will need to use it via PCIe with something like this,
Probably better to talk to dell about this.
Yeah, I am sure they know what they are doing. The Tech will be here in a couple hours.
I am sure an SSD will be faster, but I am not really concerned about minutes here or there. If it doesn’t slow down my renders, I am fine. If I notice a huge difference I’ll take action. When the warranty is up, which is soon I think, I’ll probably purchase a new workstation.
Is it worth replacing HDDs with SSDs for non-boot drives? Currently I have 2 x 2TB HDDs which are ~70% full and contain the projects and assets (models, textures etc.). Are there any benefits to be had? What about downsides?
Yes its worth using SSD. I had ssds for last 7 years and they work great. New M2 ssds are even faster but you need new mobo for it, and i read they aren’t as reliable. I would get a 2-3 tb ssd for primary drive, you won’t regret it.
Thanks for the reply Dmitry. I already have a super fast NVMe SSD for primary drive (check signature) and My mobo has 8 connectors for SSDs. My question was about replacing the HDDs I save projects and assets on with SATA SSDs.
I would never recommend to keep projects on any hdd, or ssd. It should be raid or some sort of redundant array. SSD would give you good performance over HDD in any case, but you can’t afford to lose any data if one or two fail (and that happens)
I think it is not worth, unless you are encoding/decoding 4k videos.. In this case your HDD read/write speeds will be bottleneck for your rendering speed and your CPU will be at like 30% utilization.
But for 3D rendering, your HDDs are probably idling most of the time.
I have had few clients interested in going Sata SSDs for their storage drives and I convinced them that this is not worth the money.
You don’t need a new Mobo for an NVMe.. Most if not all X99 boards since 2014 are equipped with NVMe slots. For other platforms that doesn’t have an NVMe slot, you should be able to use your drive directly through PCIe slots(x4 at least) and you will not lose any performance.
There should be a cloud backup or offline backup.. But I can say that recovering data of a failed HDD is very easy and way cheaper than Sata SSDs.
It is not going to affect your render times.. Let me know how it goes
I am back up and I am installing Windows updates. Nothing seems slower so far. He put in a 1.2TB HD.
Do you guys install any PC optimizing software or registry cleaners? I have read that they are all a waste, but I always end up buying them. I want to keep this install as simple as it gets. How about virus software? I also read that you are just as likely to get a virus through them, so they are a waste and Windows built-in virus software is all you need, which is all I had for the last four years without an issue.
I actually have two external backup drives and I also use Carbonite for cloud backup. I have an insane amount of data on Carbonite, which I just renewed last week.
Good to hear mate! Congrats on the new drive. 1.2 TB is quite good for boot drive.
You can use CCleaner once every month or so, it will take care of many things. The free version should work fine, but you can buy if you like it later on.
Then in your task manager, go to startup tab and disable any unecessary apps that might slow down your bootup. you will find update services for many apps..
This should be enough and this is what I tell my clients to do.
If you want to go the extra mile and have control over everything, there is an app called AVG PC Tuneup
I’ve been using it for over 11 years, when it was called Tune up Utilities before. What I like about this app is that it dynamically controls the CPU priority for foreground apps. Say you are rendering with Max and want to use your browser, so instead of going to task manager and changing the priority for 3Ds Max manually, this app will do that for you automatically.
Other advantages is that you will be able to control all windows services like Cortana, power options, windows updates and many other settings.
Like I said above, you will be fine without this app, but it is an option if you are into having this kind of controls..
Windows defender should be fine as long as you are very aware of what you click, and you should turn on windows update if you are solely relying on it.
Being aware of what you click is not easy for many people, so usually when someone’s account is hacked(skype/facebook/discord..etc) automated messages will be sent to all his contacts with links.. The link can be a GIF, or something that looks like a youtube URL and such
Many people will fall for this and they will click the link.. So this is the case where windows defender and other antivirus apps cannot do anything and you will get hacked. See here,
So for piece of mind there is Malwarebytes which is very highly rated and offers web-based protection, having control over your browser. It will block any harmful pages and it can auto block downlaods and pop ups..
Malwarbytes works with windows defender(doesn’t replace it)..I always install Malwarebytes and CCleaner on all new builds for my clients if they agree to
Thanks for the info. I have always installed and used both Malwarebytes and CCleaner, although this year I read a virus came through CCleaner, so I removed it.
Up and running. Now I remember why I dreaded this. People say, “just reinstall Windows”! It has taken me two days to install and license everything. Everything is running quickly. MAX has crashed three times today, which is getting old. Things like changing 2D displacement crashed MAX twice and once for no obvious reason. I can press 8 on my keyboard now, without crashing, so that’s awesome. Thanks for all the advice. Onward and upward