Question Replacing/Upgrading my HDD

[ShadyKat]

Hello, I'm looking to upgrade my SSD as mine is only 256gb. I'm looking to upgrade to the Samsung 860 pro V-nand 1TB SSD. My questions are, will the Samsung work with my system? Will transferring all info from drive to drive be easy? And finally is this the best upgrade in this price range for me? Mainly, will it work with my system. I'm looking for something in the less than 500$ price range. I have M.2 slots but not looking for an M.2 as I have read that they wouldn't be good for my particular motherboard.


My system specs:
Asrock z97 extreme6 mobo
i5-4690k cpu oc to 3.9 radiator cooled
32gb g.skill ram running at 2133 MHz (DDR3)
evga gtx1070 Ti FTW2
thermaltake 850w psu
crucial 256gb ssd (not sure model number but close to 2yrs old)
running a 32in benq 4k monitor and a 24in acer both ips monitors

only doing movies, youtube and 4k gaming, some mmo and games like the witcher, dragonquest 11, monster hunter world, final fantasy 14

 

[thomas123321]

Hello, I'm looking to upgrade my SSD as mine is only 256gb. I'm looking to upgrade to the Samsung 860 pro V-nand 1TB SSD. My questions are, will the Samsung work with my system? Will transferring all info from drive to drive be easy? And finally is this the best upgrade in this price range for me? Mainly, will it work with my system. I'm looking for something in the less than 500$ price range. I have M.2 slots but not looking for an M.2 as I have read that they wouldn't be good for my particular motherboard.


My system specs:
Asrock z97 extreme6 mobo
i5-4690k cpu oc to 3.9 radiator cooled
32gb g.skill ram running at 2133 MHz (DDR3)
evga gtx1070 Ti FTW2
thermaltake 850w psu
crucial 256gb ssd (not sure model number but close to 2yrs old)
running a 32in benq 4k monitor and a 24in acer both ips monitors

only doing movies, youtube and 4k gaming, some mmo and games like the witcher, dragonquest 11, monster hunter world, final fantasy 14

The Samsung SSD is totally fine. yup will work with no issues at all, why dont you just hook up the new ssd as a second storage for the pc instead of transferring all the data?

 

[ShadyKat]

If I set it up that way, will games stored on it still load fast? I assumed your games should be on main drive. I was also thinking the Samsung would be a lot faster than my original drive so I would want to have my OS on that instead. If it doesn't matter I would def do that instead.

 

[ElectrO_90]

I have the same motherboard as you, but why would you use the 860 Pro?
Why not move to M2 NVMe with a 970 Evo plus?

You would just clone your old hard disk using Samsung Magician to the new one and all would be sorted, just remove the old SSD after first boot up to make sure it all works.
Then put it back and make sure it boots up from NVMe instead of the old SSD in the Bios
I would love to know where you read it wouldn't be good for your motherboard

 

[hotaru251]

If I set it up that way, will games stored on it still load fast? I assumed your games should be on main drive. I was also thinking the Samsung would be a lot faster than my original drive so I would want to have my OS on that instead. If it doesn't matter I would def do that instead.

only thing you need SSD as main drive for is OS (and antivirus can only be put on main drive too i think) to benefit from improved loading speed.

u can have hdd as main drive and a ssd subdrive and as long as you move your game files over to the ssd they will benefit from the increased speed (as they would now be running off of it) be it 1 main drive or 5 subdrives they all read/write same (based on physical speeds of each ssd ofc) it just primary will be default for some stuff.


quick edit: also the reason some ppl likely saying not to use m.2 with your board is casue its gonna steal pcie lanes (what ur gpu uses) but overall it shouldnt really impact your performance (and aslong as its nvme and not sata you will gain MUCH faster speeds running off m.2 over sata ssd)

 

[ShadyKat]

I have read i the m.2 isn't good on my mobo it'll actually slow down the ssd speeds, the reason I can't remember but have read it in multiple forums recently while looking for a new larger drive to buy. I'm not too pc savy but has something to do with sharing same bus rails as my video card I think? also my video card is so large it covers the main M.2 slot

 

[ElectrO_90]

I used to run the 390x and 960 pro M2 - no slow down
The 390x card is a beast
Now I have the 580 card and still the M2
Of course, if you think you prefer a standard SSD do that, but the rumours of it actually affecting performance, is highly doubtful and I have 9 SATA's full and the M2 - giving me max of 10 hard disks spanning over 24TB

Changing your existing SSD to a new one - you don't need to do anything with Cloning - because it will be about the same speed as your crucial. So just add it in without cloning, and install whatever you want on the new one. The speed difference will be neglible because you are still limited with Sata 3 speeds.

 

[ShadyKat]

sweet, great input guys. So no matter if I go originally with the 860 pro or look up a 970 evo I should be good either way.

 

[hotaru251]

I have read i the m.2 isn't good on my mobo it'll actually slow down the ssd speeds, the reason I can't remember but have read it in multiple forums recently while looking for a new larger drive to buy. I'm not too pc savy but has something to do with sharing same bus rails as my video card I think? also my video card is so large it covers the main M.2 slot

m.2 slots "steal" pcie lanes is likely reason you are missing.

while true the performance likely wont be noticible for most ppl.

an nvme m.2 is way faster than sata ssd.

while an sata m.2 wont have an increase over a normal sata connected ssd.


but again for what you want a normal ssd is likely better price to performance ratio.