I had 2 x HDDs, replaced one with SDD - both are 'primary partitions' - is this ok?

Hi, i'm new to the forum so be gentle!

I'm vaguely computer literate, i usually wing things and get by that way.
i heard that SDDs were far better than HDDs so bought a samsung SDD 850 EVO 500GB to put in my HP ENVY laptop (1TB HDD)

I had a trial run installing a cheaper 120GB SDD in my girfriend's awful (and almost unusable) 6 year old DELL laptop - i figured if i messed up it hardly mattered - but it went brilliantly, it is so much faster now.

So i then had a go with my HP ENVY. to my surprise i found when i opened up the back it consisted of 2 x 500GB HDDs. bit dumb of me not to check first but there it is.
I replaced the 1st HDD with the new SDD (which i'd already cloned etc) and everything seemed to go ok.

the only thing is, it hasn't made much of a difference. and i can hear the HDD winding up and whirring. i went to look up disk management and there are a few things that are odd.

one is that it states i have 2 hard drives, one is the SDD with 465GB (ok) but the other is the HDD with 931GB - but it obviously has less than 500GB as i removed the other 500GB hard drive!

the other query is that both hard drives are labelled as 'primary partition' - should only the SDD be primary partition, and the HDD secondary? or does that not matter?

i attach some screengrabs that may explain.

i have windows 8.1 installed, intel i7 2.4GHz processor, 16GB RAM, 64 bit etc

 

Re: I had 2 x HDDs, replaced one with SDD - both are 'primary partitions' - is this o

I would double check the other drive. It may very well be a 1TB HDD.

Was this a RAID installation? How did you clone the OS, or was it a clean install?

 

Re: I had 2 x HDDs, replaced one with SDD - both are 'primary partitions' - is this o

hi, thanks for replying.

I googled 'RAID installation' to see what that means and i'm pretty sure i didn't do that. i'd had the laptop a year and hadn't personally partitioned anything. i think i set up a recovery drive which appeared as a D:drive which had 25GB but i was just following the instructions given when i first used the laptop

For cloning, I used software called 'data migration' that came with the Samsung SDD - it cloned the C:drive plus the D: drive. i then removed the C:drive and replaced it with the Samsung SDD.

i think you're right about the other drive as i attached the HDD i had previously removed and it is 1TB so i reckon i must have had 2 TB on my laptop and not realised it!

i guess my questions remain the same - does the remaining HDD slow the system down? would the laptop be faster if i removed the HDD and just left the SDD?

and does it matter that both drives in the laptop - the SDD and the HDD - are both 'primary partitions'?

many thanks in advance

Aidyonline

 

Re: I had 2 x HDDs, replaced one with SDD - both are 'primary partitions' - is this o

Running an SSD on one channel, and a storage drive on the other channel is not a problem. When you see "Primary Partition", it's just in reference to that drive space (i.e., C:, D:, E:, etc). Try running an ATTO benchmark and let us know what your top speed is with the Samsung.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/atto_disk_benchmark.html

 

Re: I had 2 x HDDs, replaced one with SDD - both are 'primary partitions' - is this o

Hello again, thanks for your reply!

not familiar with ATTO so googled it, think i've done this right.
the direct i/o box was taicked and the overlapped i/o option defaulted. queue depth 4 - whatever that is

for my standard e drive the results ranged from
write read
6,149 6,733 (at 0.5KB t/f size)

to
write read
111,848 112,788 (at 8192KB t/f size)

for the Samsung SSD i got:
write read
49,024 57,216 (at 0.5KB t/f size)

to
write read
519,971 546,588 (at 8192KB t/f size)

don't really know what this means but the SSD seems much much better!

 

Re: I had 2 x HDDs, replaced one with SDD - both are 'primary partitions' - is this o

It means the SSD is 546/519 MB/s read/write.

It doesn't get much better than that in an SSD these days, unless you're running a bootable PCI card.