[SOLVED] What is the best approach to properly and safely write/copy large amounts of data from an HDD to SSD?

[animemangamer]

Hello below is my aging 5 year old external storage that has my entire life's collection. It's currently running RAID 1 (mirrored for redundancy on each disk)

I recently bought a Samsung 870 QVO 8TB SDD and I'm hoping to move/copy the data from my book duo on it. The SSD is internally installed on my main PC.

The book duo is about 95% filled and I was wondering what's the best approach to transferring all that data to the new SSD.

Main questions:

1. Do I simply copy all at once or should I divide it into smaller increments?

2. Should I Cut/Move or should I just Copy for now?

Other questions:

3. Are SSDs a reliable way to preserve my data or should I continue using HDD/Raid Systems for the future?

My book duo was exclusively used as a storage device that I only access once or twice a month and most times it remains unplugged from it's power supply adapter. The Samsung 870 QVO 8TB SSD will basically replace my book duo's job except for being internally installed.
My main PC currently has 2 internal drives:

Primary C: Drive: Corsair Force Series™ MP510 960GB M.2 SSD (I plan to upgrade to a Samsung 980 2TB later on)
Primary Storage Drive: Samsung 860 EVO 4TB SSD (frequently accessed)

The new Samsung 870 QVO 8TB SSD drive won't be accessed as much and copying to/from data will be minimal.

I plan to sell the my book duo 16tb or sell each wd red 8tb drives inside it. I'm considering building a NAS or purchasing a new book duo with higher capacity but I'm not sure what I should do yet.

 

[DSzymborski]

Just copying is fine.

Never ever cut and paste across partitions/drives.

SSDs are perfectly reliable as are HDDs. Your best solution depends on your data and use of that data.

RAID is not a backup strategy. RAID is for data availability not data protection.

 

[USAFRet]

As above, a simple copy/paste.

 

[USAFRet]

3. Are SSDs a reliable way to preserve my data or should I continue using HDD/Raid Systems for the future?

RAID is not a backup.

It is good for continued uptime, not data security.

SSDs are just as reliable than spinning drives,if not more than.

My house systems are all SSD only.
The NAS box is spinning drives. Primarily because 70TB of SSD is a bit out of my price range...😉

 

[animemangamer]

Just copying is fine.

Never ever cut and paste across partitions/drives.

SSDs are perfectly reliable as are HDDs. Your best solution depends on your data and use of that data.

RAID is not a backup strategy. RAID is for data availability not data protection.

Hello, thank you for the quick reply, I guess I will just start with copying the entire data from the book into my new drive. I was just wondering if it'll make a difference or maybe speed up the process with Samsungs Turbowrite feature but I'm not quite sure how that works and how to take advantage of it.

Now that you mentioned it, while the SSDs don't have moving mechanical parts it does have limited write/erase usage according to Samsung SSD Warranty these QLC drives are rated for 2,880 TB TBW. Please correct me if I'm wrong but that does that mean the drive will fail after writing/erasing 8TB of data on this drive 360 times? Will my drive degrade from simply being connected to power/SATA cable internally?

 

[animemangamer]

RAID is not a backup.

It is good for continued uptime, not data security.

SSDs are just as reliable than spinning drives,if not more than.

My house systems are all SSD only.
The NAS box is spinning drives. Primarily because 70TB of SSD is a bit out of my price range...😉

Oh I didn't know this I thought RAID 1 would offer me the best data protection locally. What would you recommend? I really don't want to do any cloud based subscription and external SSDs are expensive and limited in options that I would consider. I don't think I would need more than 16-20TB for the foreseeable future.

 

[USAFRet]

Oh I didn't know this I thought RAID 1 would offer me the best data protection locally. What would you recommend? I really don't want to do any cloud based subscription and external SSDs are expensive and limited in options that I would consider. I don't think I would need more than 16-20TB for the foreseeable future.

A RAID 1 offers protection (mostly) in the event of a physical drive fail.
Continued uptime. Say, if you are running a webstore, and unscheduled downtime can mean lost sales.

It does nothing for all the other forms of data loss.

As simple as.....accidentally delete a file?
On a RAID 1 array, it is gone. There is no 'second copy' to recover.
The user and the OS sees but a single copy.
Accidental deletion, ransomware, nasty virus...all gone.

And this is a very common misconception. You're not alone in this.

The basic concept is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 physical devices, at least 1 offsite or otherwise offline.

All my house systems do nightly or weekly full drive images, via Macrium Reflect, to my NAS.
The data on the NAS is backed up weekly to another volume.
There is also an offsite copy of critical and critical and personal family data.
My movie ISOs are in two copies in the NAS. But if that does go away, I can always get another copy of Alien.
I cannot get back a copy of my eldest grandson (now 17) at age 2, dressed in a pink tutu...😉 That is an example of critical family data.

My basic procedure is the first post here. Modified somewhat since I wrote that, but the basics still hold.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Bob.B]

Hello, thank you for the quick reply, I guess I will just start with copying the entire data from the book into my new drive. I was just wondering if it'll make a difference or maybe speed up the process with Samsungs Turbowrite feature but I'm not quite sure how that works and how to take advantage of it.

Now that you mentioned it, while the SSDs don't have moving mechanical parts it does have limited write/erase usage according to Samsung SSD Warranty these QLC drives are rated for 2,880 TB TBW. Please correct me if I'm wrong but that does that mean the drive will fail after writing/erasing 8TB of data on this drive 360 times? Will my drive degrade from simply being connected to power/SATA cable internally?

Copy the stuff over in chunks.
Make sure each chunk was successfully copied.
You can try the turbowrite but I doubt making the ssd write faster will make a diff the slowest part will be the hdd sending the stuff.

 

[USAFRet]

Now that you mentioned it, while the SSDs don't have moving mechanical parts it does have limited write/erase usage according to Samsung SSD Warranty these QLC drives are rated for 2,880 TB TBW. Please correct me if I'm wrong but that does that mean the drive will fail after writing/erasing 8TB of data on this drive 360 times? Will my drive degrade from simply being connected to power/SATA cable internally?

1. It does NOT mean the drive will fall over and die at that number. That is just how long the warranty lasts. Just like the age component. It will not fall over and die at 5 years + 1 day.

2. 2,880TBW is HUGE. Literally decades of normal consumer use. Assuming it does not die from something else, your grandkids won't reach that 2,880TB number.

3. My current C drive, a 500GB Samsung 850 EVO, has been in near 24/7 use since installation. 44527 running hours, 5 years. It currently reports 78TBW. Approx 3% of your "2,880". Extrapolated out, this use equates to 167 years.

 

[Grobe]

Before I switched to Linux at home some years ago, I would have solved that with a nice pice of software called Teracopy because it have a feature to test the data integrity of files after being copied to another location.

In Linux however, I'd use regular copy first and then rsync with the parameter of checking that the contents of files are equal.

[edit]
Seems to be a few alternatives for Teracopy for Linux <link>, but have not tested those. Personally I never had any use for other tools that rsync.
Here is a discussion on the rsync file integration topic if interested <link>