Add SSD To Laptop And Keep HDD

Can I use SSD and HDD at the same time? Lots of people are confused about this question especially when building a computer for gaming.

Can you have an SSD and an HDD on the same computer? The answer is absolutely yes. It is an excellent idea to use SSD and HDD at the same time. An SSD boasts many distinctive merits such as fast loading speed, low power consumption, and etc. So, lots of people want to install an SSD with an existing HDD.

Using SSD and HDD at the same time can take advantage of the fast speed of an SSD and the large capacity of an HDD. However, the large capacity SSDs are more expensive than a usual HDD with the same space, so many people can only buy an SSD with a relatively small capacity.

Then, how to use SSD and HDD at the same time? Which drive should be used to install OS? Which drive should be used to store personal data?

7 Useful Tips

1.Install OS and Apps on SSD

It is obvious that most SSDs are much faster than a conventional HDD when reading data. If you want to get fast speed when loading some large programs such as Steam and Photoshop, you would better install them on the SSD.

In addition, it is highly recommended that you install OS and frequently-used programs on the SSD, which enables your computer to work much faster.

2.Store Personal Data on HDD

As mentioned above, many users choose a small-capacity SSD due to its high price. An SSD that doesn’t have enough free space will not be able to work as fast as before. This is because the SSD without enough free space will have to repeatedly write, which will damage the blocks in use.

Thus, you’d better store the infrequently used personal files on HDD, such as videos, movies, music, photos, and other large files.

3.Enable SSD TRIM Feature

As you might know, TRIM plays an important role in making an SSD work faster than an HDD. It can help OS precisely detect the data location that you want to move or delete. Once a file is deleted, the TRIM feature will command your drive to thoroughly clean the file from the sectors. That means new data can be written into the drive faster.

Therefore, make sure the SSD TRIM feature is enabled on your PC.

4.Back up Your Data to Another Storage Device

Backups play an important role in data recovery. No matter what types of drives and how many drives that you use on the computer, it is always recommended to make a regular data backup. You can back up data to another storage device. Here external storage is highly recommended out of data security. For instance, if your laptop lost accidentally, you still can restore the system and individual data from the external drive.

5.Never Defrag SSD

As you know, the files on an HDD is fragmented and stored in multiple locations. If the HDD is used for a long time, it will take much time to locate the files when reading and writing. In order to speed up the hard drive and improve performance, you can defrag it with Disk Defragmenter.

However, disk defragmentation is only suitable for HDD. Since SSDs have a different structure from HDD, defragmentation can’t improve SSD’s performance. In addition, it will shorten the lifespan of an SSD.

6.Migrate OS and Apps to SSD

To install OS on the SSD with existing HDD, you can utilize a professional tool – MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is an all-in-one partition manager. This software boasts many powerful features like Convert MBR to GPT, extend partition, align partition, and so on. You can manage SSD and HDD together on the same computer in an effective way.

7.Store Personal Data on HDD

After installing OS on the SSD, you can use the HDD as storage. To make full use of an HDD, you can categorize the personal files and place them in different partitions. For example, you can store the game data in a partition, and place the videos and movies to another partition.

Create Partitions:

First of all, you can create different partitions on the hard drive based on your needs. Here’s a full guide for you.

• Right-click the unallocated space and select Create from the pop-up menu.

• In the pop-up window, you can specify the parameters of the partition including File System, Cluster Size, Partition Label, and so on. For example, you can create a partition named Game. After that, click on OK button to confirm the changes.

• Click on Apply to execute all the pending operations.

Then, you can follow the above steps to create other partitions to store your personal data.

Move/Resize Partitions:

In addition to creating partitions, you can use this powerful software to further manage your partitions. For instance, you may need to extend or move the partition so as to create more.

Here’s how.

• In the main interface, select the partition that you want to adjust and click on Move/Resize Partitions from the left pane.

• Drag the tangle rightward to extend a partition or you can drag the whole partition handle towards unallocated space to move a partition. After that, click on OK to confirm the changes.

• Click on Apply to execute the pending changes.

Conclusion

Can I use SSD and HDD at the same time? Absolutely yes! You can follow the effective tips given by this post to use SSD and HDD together on one computer. In addition, this post provides you with detailed steps to manage your SSD and HDD.

Should you install games on SSD or HDD? As long as there is enough free space, you should install games on SSD. This is because most SSDs have faster loading speed when running a game than HDD. If there is an existing HDD, you can set it as storage drive.

Also note that SSD that is designed with SLC or MLC variants, will have a longer lifespan than a usual hard drive. This is because hard drives are a type of mechanical device that is very likely to be damaged by many things. Check out Amazon.com for HDD and SSD.