gateway ta6 laptop

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gateway ta6 laptop

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holt:
Yes, HD's power down after a certain threshold of inactivity is reached. Using a portable HD case that comes with its own power supply, this threshold is larger than than with a portable HD that draws power from the USB port it is connected to.

And I don't think it is bad to assume the threshold for each type of portable HD varies when connected to a desktop or a laptop. In principle, a desktop has less problems sustaining the portable HD that draws power from USB than a laptop does. Mainly because the power supply in a desktop is much "beefier" than the power supply of a laptop.

If a portable HD with its own power supply is used with a laptop, it will put much less strain on the laptop and as a result the threshold could be increased.

One more thing to consider: the threshold will also be affected as well by the power saving settings of either the desktop or the laptop.

Prolonging life of a hard disk...that is an interesting subject, invoking much debate.

For me (running servers and desktops 24/7) it is important to keep hard disk in their "comfort zone", meaning: between 35 and 45 degrees Celsius operating temperature, dust free and using philosophies to reduce writing/reading wherever I can. Yes, trusting the NTFS file system to do that for you is...not smart. This is me, being politically correct here. In case you are interested, see other threads here in the forum how I really feel about this subject.

Just know that powering up any hard disk is quite taxing for that device. So you want to prevent that as much as possible. If you are going to turn it off, leave it of for a significant amount of time. If you continuously power down/power up a hard disk you will wear it out much quicker than have it running all the time. All of the above is valid for spinning hard disks...SSD hard disks are a completely different type of beast.

Come to think of it...if you are still running XP on your laptop, you should check with a tool such as Minitool Partition Wizard (free/commercial) to check if the partition(s) on your hard disk are aligned. If that is not the case, I suggest you let that software fix that for your laptop. That is a job that can take all day, depending on the size of your hard disk and the amount of data that is stored on it. It is also essential to keep your laptop connected to reliable power grid for as long as this procedure takes. Afterwards you will notice a 5 to 15% gain of general speed, because writing/reading to your hard disk has been reduced significantly.

Modern version of Windows already take care of aligning the partition(s), but XP and older didn't.
-Shades (January 16, 2016, 06:18 AM)
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Thank you, it is very much appreciated!

Shades:
External drive case looks fine enough. Alignment is what you should check first. For a very brief explanation visit this link.
For a much more detailed explanation, that uses an image to clarify what the aligning problem is, visit this link.

The first link also tells you what you need to do to check and/or fix it with several different pieces of software, including Minitool Partition Wizard. Please, do follow the advice about making a backup of your data before attempting to fix a problem with your hard disk. There is always a (minute) chance something fails and it is better to be prepared. Now that I know you have an SSD hard disk, it is unlikely you will have this problem, but it doesn't hurt to check it anyway.

Depending on how much partitions you are comfortable with, I wouldn't bother too much with basic and dynamic disks. Most, if not all, partition software can deal with basic disks. Although dynamic disks are around for quite some time, there could be a problem finding a freeware piece of software that can help you with fixing a situation in the future. Finding such software for basic disks is much less of a hassle. Speed-wise there won't be too much difference between a basic and dynamic disk.

Dynamic disks can be problematic in laptops, so I really would keep it as simple as possible.

holt:
Familiarizing myself with MiniTool Partition Wizard (so I wouldn't bug you so much), I found this; The Difference Between Basic and Dynamic Hard Disks, "Dynamic disks are not supported on laptop computers." All this is a little over my head, but I note this because my computer is a laptop with Windows XP Tablet and a 100GB SSD hard drive. The external drive case which I'm thinking of getting, is to hold a 500GB platter type 7400 RPM SATA hard drive.
-holt (January 16, 2016, 09:33 PM)
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After weeks of waiting, the slow boat from China arrived and so did my external drive case. I'm surprised at the speed of data transfer; evidently USB 3.0 is pretty fast, and it was my old thumb drive that was the slow poke. I plan to familiarize myself with the external drive setup, and then figure out how to create a clone backup of the laptop drive OS in a secondary partition on the external drive. Somewhere down the line, then to address your suggestion of aligning the laptop's SSD drive. The external drive and USB 3.0 connection are really quite fast.

I can't figure out how to instruct MWB to scan the external drive. Does it do that automatically only after doing C:?

holt:
Using EASE US Partition Master, I deleted all old partitions on my external HD in a USB case, wiped the drive, and then clone-copied the laptop drive to the external drive.
Result; fail to boot from external HD OS clone.

I ran Lazesoft boot recovery tool to create a bootable recovery CD, and ran it.
Result; fail to boot from external HD OS clone.

I wanted a backup copy of my laptop HD OS. At least I didn't screw up the laptop.

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