New Hdd Or Ssd Needed - Guidance, Please

Greetings,

Acronis kept hanging while trying to perform a full backup.
I accidentally ran across information under Computer Management or something somewhere...Administrate?
I recall advice here that goes something like this: "Hardware trumps software"
At least I can laugh because I have a backup...(not that THAT's as intuitive as it should be)

I found this...

Problem: Disk failure - Description
Windows Disk Diagnostic detected a S.M.A.R.T. fault on disk Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 (volumes R:\). This disk might fail; back up your computer now....etc.

Great. Why did I get no notification of this I wonder?
How do I set something to get notified next time? Anyway....

Looks like one of my two, 1-TB HDDs is failing, so I may need/want to replace one or two of them.
I have enough power, and open slots, to just add one at a time (if I do two) and migrate the old data to a new drive with Acronis, or maybe just "copy" straight over to the new drive, if that's even Kosher.

Thing is, I'd hate to buy the wrong drive(s), and trial and error is just not quite as good as asking YOU!

Some time ago, I replaced my little 80 GB SSD with a 1 TB SSD.
Now one of my big disk spinners (R:\) is acting weird.

So, what do I need to make sure of?
...what detail do I not want to learn about the hard way?
(I saw mSATA and have no clue what that is)
I don't know if there is some advantage to the PCIe stuff...maybe just getting rid of extra money?

I have only ONE open SATA3 socket on my board.
Can I plug a SATA3 drive into a SATA2 socket?

So, perhaps something in a SATA2 and another in a SATA3?
Maybe I should get one SATA3 SSD, and one SATA2 HDD?
I don't know where the bottlenecks are, and what works with what.

Here, below, are more system and slot details for your consideration.

Thanks in advance,

Carl

Win 10 x64 (Belarc thinks it's Win 8 - HAHAHA)
2.70 gigahertz Intel Core i7 920
12 GB RM

Disks
C: (NTFS on drive 0) * 999.15 GB 718.96 GB free - Boot drive
D: (NTFS on drive 1) 1000.20 GB 103.94 GB free - Programs and data
G: (NTFS on drive 4) 5000.85 GB 2072.17 GB free - external backups
R: (NTFS on drive 3) 1000.20 GB 276.91 GB free - sick and dying mostly data
Z: (NTFS on drive 2) 80.02 GB 73.41 GB free - scratch disk for Photoshop, and cache for WIN?

Drive details from Belarc
Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 1, s/n JP2921HQ0M55HA, rev JP4OA39C, SMART Status: Healthy
Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 3, s/n JP2921HQ16YZRA, rev JP4OA39C, SMART Failure
INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GN [Hard drive] (80.03 GB) -- drive 2, s/n CVPO9491044T080BGN, rev 2CV102HA, SMART Status: Healthy
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 0, s/n S2RFNXAH303578X, rev EMT02B6Q, SMART Status: Healthy
TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 USB Device [Hard drive] (5000.98 GB) -- drive 4, s/n 20150923015601

MoBo
Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. X58A-UD3R
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. F1 12/28/2009

Plan: Run D to Sata3 – 6GB/s, and R to SATA2.
Consider 2x SSDs for D and R, or..an SSD + HDD.

Sockets/slots, in order of appearance
PCIEX1_1 – open - manual says takes only “short” card
PCIEX1_2 – open
(I have no clue about these. I can see the sockets)

PCIEX16_1 - video card
PCIEX8_1 - covered by vid card
PCIEX16_2 - open
PCIEX8_2 – open
PCI – open

Manual has some details about the PCI slots...I kind of doubt that matters unless there is some great thing about PCIe? If so, I'll get the details.

 

Either way will work. Go with what's easier and more comfortable to you.

They're faster (and more expensive) and I doubt your motherboard BIOS will even boot from the PCIe bus. Save it for your next PC.

Yes, it's backward compatible.

I doubt you'll find a new SATA2 drive anywhere.

SATA3 is faster than SATA2 but I doubt you will notice a difference using HDDs. If you replace the failing HDD with an SSD instead, I would put it on the SATA3 socket to take maximum advantage of it's speed though.

 

Thank you Just. I feel better - like my head is on the right page.