Planning to get a New HDD But Use It Later?

Alberto Bj · May 8, 2017

Planning to get a new hard drive , i got a lot of important files and i feel i need to back up because my old laptop hdd (used as a storage hdd for pc at the moment) is 4.5 years old , still working no errors so far , avg idle temps at 38c most of the time , and i do some average copy and pasting activity . now my question is if i buy a new hard drive could i just simply copy and backup the files from the old hard drive to the newly brought one then when the time comes that the old hard drive fails, its the time when im going to use the newly bought hard drive to prolong its lifespan ? or should i use the newly brought hard drive right after i bought it so i could test it and savor the warranty ? i really want to prolong its life for like another 4-5 years max because im just a student and tight on budget. or is it just fine if i use it immediately after its bought.

ss202sl · May 8, 2017

Get the new HDD, and use it now. Then get another (external)HDD for backups. Even though there's a warranty, you will still lose data if the drive fails.
If you get a SSD for the laptop, you'd see a big increase is speed.

ArtPog · May 8, 2017

You really haven't clearly explained your present situation.

1. This "old laptop HDD" that's 4.5 yrs. old...it's being used as a secondary drive in your system for storage/backup purposes, right?

2. So is all the data stored on that secondary HDD contained on your system's boot drive? In effect, the HDD is a duplicate of the boot drive insofar that all the data on the boot drive (possibly not including the OS files) is contained on the HDD?

3. But because the HDD is 4.5 yrs old and contains important files (which are also contained on the boot drive?) you believe it would be wise to maintain another backup drive?

4. If you feel uncomfortable that because of the importance of the stored files you do not have sufficient backups, then it's up to you if you want to purchase another HDD for backup purposes, presumably cloning the contents of the present backup drive to the new one and subsequently continue maintaining multiple backups in the days, months, years, ahead.

You can use the new HDD as your "first line of defense" if you wish and the "old laptop drive" as a duplicate backup storage unit.

cryoburner · May 8, 2017

Alberto Bj :

The thing with hard drives is that they can potentially last a really long time, or potentially fail during their first weeks or months of use. If you wait for your current drive to fail before using the new one, you might potentially be waiting another decade. : P

You absolutely should be regularly backing up any important data so that it's on both drives though, in case one were to fail. If these are going to be in a desktop PC, you might keep both of them installed. Packing one away in storage is not necessarily going to make it last any longer, and drives can potentially fail in storage as well.

Alberto Bj · May 8, 2017

ArtPog :

You really haven't clearly explained your present situation.

1. This "old laptop HDD" that's 4.5 yrs. old...it's being used as a secondary drive in your system for storage/backup purposes, right?

2. So is all the data stored on that secondary HDD contained on your system's boot drive? In effect, the HDD is a duplicate of the boot drive insofar that all the data on the boot drive (possibly not including the OS files) is contained on the HDD?

3. But because the HDD is 4.5 yrs old and contains important files (which are also contained on the boot drive?) you believe it would be wise to maintain another backup drive?

4. If you feel uncomfortable that because of the importance of the stored files you do not have sufficient backups, then it's up to you if you want to purchase another HDD for backup purposes, presumably cloning the contents of the present backup drive to the new one and subsequently continue maintaining multiple backups in the days, months, years, ahead.

You can use the new HDD as your "first line of defense" if you wish and the "old laptop drive" as a duplicate backup storage unit.

forgot to mention that i use a Small sized SSD for my Boot Drive and the data on the old laptop HDD is only games and files i wanna keep

Alberto Bj · May 8, 2017

cryoburner :

Alberto Bj :

The thing with hard drives is that they can potentially last a really long time, or potentially fail during their first weeks or months of use. If you wait for your current drive to fail before using the new one, you might potentially be waiting another decade. : P

You absolutely should be regularly backing up any important data so that it's on both drives though, in case one were to fail. If these are going to be in a desktop PC, you might keep both of them installed. Packing one away in storage is not necessarily going to make it last any longer, and drives can potentially fail in storage as well.

forgot to mention that i use a Small sized SSD for my Boot Drive and the data on the old laptop HDD is only games and files i wanna keep

thanks for that suggestion, will use it immediately then

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Planning to get a New HDD But Use It Later?

Alberto Bj

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Alberto Bj

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