Had a scare yesterday during a ECM swap for my vette. Did an initial write to the new ECM, walked away to let it soak prior to starting the calibration process, and was met by a black screen telling me the hard drive could not be found. Realized I was screwed big time, cause I had not backed up the drive for months. Panic set in....Cycled power and Windows 10 rebooted and all was golden. Immediately backed up the drive....whew...

Got to thinking about how lucky I got, and I better have a backup drive. Maybe this one is dieing, I dunno.....but I want to be prepared. Figured I'd go the Solid State route based on some feedback I got from you guys on drives when you helped me pick out a new laptop last year. Yah, I know, you told me go SSHD....

I have a 4T external drive, so I'm thinking an internal drive thats 500g should be plenty. Started surfing today and was quickly overwhelmed by the choices.

So what's the collective Axiom Forum IT brain trust think I should get? My laptop is an HP Envy 360 with the 15" screen.

If you want to go safe but 'spensive, Intel is the best bet (current high end is the 730, but the 540s looks decent too). Samsung makes a very popular (and fast) drive in the 850 Pro, but I've not seen the best failure rates with it. But it should be just fine in a laptop environment.

I just bought a buttload of smallish (500GB), inexpensive-ish (read consumer) SSDs to test at work, but I'm testing a very particular thing which is probably not applicable. Still, I'll let you know if anything stands out good or bad.

Thank you Ken!

I'm thinking 250 max, or I might as well be looking at buying a second laptop. The laptop I have was about a grand last year. Amazon has both Intel and Samsung 55G drives for under 250.

Are one of these what you'd recommend?

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-2-5-Inch-In...eries+480gb+ssd

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LF10KTO/ref=psdc_1292116011_t2_B00IF4NGXQ

Wow, didn't realize the Sammy had a 10 year warranty. I'd go with that one.

Warranties mean nothing .

Ah shoot. ... I was too quick with the buy button yesterday and ordered the Intel. Wanted to get the bugger installed asap.

Finally got the SSHD installed last weekend. Dang this laptop is FAST now... I don't want to use my desktop anymore.

One thing needs fixing though. I keep getting a message telling me my recovery drive is out of disk space. I've been trying to figure out if this recovery is even needed. Seems there is about a 50/50 mix of opinions. I didn't pay much attention to it before. What do you think? Is there a downside to just deleting it?