Can I avoid buying a new computer by just replacing harddrives?

[Jimbo 88]

This isn't directly a "CbB" question, but this is by far the best forum anywhere.  So I ask:  

 My computer is going on 5+ years old.   I no longer have the business or income to justify constantly replacing my computer (no one feel bad for me, I made way too much money working on Cakewalk for many, many years).

How  hard is it to clone  my C drive?  will I have to re register Windows and everything else?  Should I just bite the bullet and by a whole new computer because something else might fail anyway?   My current computer is pretty decent, but will an upgrade take advantage of newer programs?

THANKS!!  --in advance.

[DeeringAmps]

I’m running two 10 year plus machines in my office. One Win7x86 (don’t ask) and my first StudioCat now Win10x64. It runs Cake   Just fine. Both started with the C drive an HDD. On both I have upgraded to SSD’s. Used Macrim Reflect to create an “image” and “restored” to the SSD. No problems…

HTH,

t

[Lord Tim]

Using something like Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect, it's actually pretty easy, and if it's just the drive rather than any other hardware, it should go fairly smoothly, so long as you do a complete image of all of the partitions and partition types and flags, etc.

My crappy old ancient dual core laptop with a spinning hard drive really had a new lease of life once I put in a SSD. Didn't make it amazing, but it was night and day with the previous performance.  

[Bobby Thistle]

I am using a 10 year old core i7 37.xx gig cpu

I have 3 drives, one I use exclusively for my music software

Last year I did some major upgrades.  Had my C: drive cloned onto an SSD drive.  I had my music drive cloned onto an SSD drive.  I I now have 32 gig of RAM.  It now runs lightning fast and I've never really had any crashes, even using lots of plugins and vst's.  I guess at some point down the road I will upgrade my motherboard and cpu but as of now there's really no need for me to do that.

I had my computer guru at my local computer shop do the clones for me as I'm really not very tech savvy.

I forgot to mention that the 3rd drive is used for backup and storage and isn't an SSD which really isn't necessary seeing as what it is being used for.

[azslow3]

2 hours ago, Jimbo 88 said:

My computer is going on 5+ years old.

That doesn't tell much about it. If it is i9 or i7 and has M2 PCIe slots, I wonder why you don't have corresponding disks already. That was almost "standard" 5 years ago.

If you don't have M2 PCIe slots, that is a good reason to think about new computer. Otherwise put  a good M2 disk there. Cloning software is disk dependent (Samsung has own, WD has specific version of Acronis, etc.). You don't need to re-authorize major software, but some plug-ins may ask to do so.

Note there are cheap M2 PCIe disks with effectively performance between HDD and SATA. I mean don't buy the cheapest, the price difference is not worse it.
Also note in most configurations only the first M2 slot supports full performance, even in case there are several such slots. It make sense to buy the biggest disk and put it there.

[John Vere]

My computers are way older than 5 years. My main DAW is 13 now. It does need replacing as I really don't get good performance for video editing. But my Cakewalk project are no problem at all possibly because I work no different than I did 20 years ago. 8 to 12 tracks and no more than maybe 20 effects. 

As far as swapping C drives I'm a huge fan of a fresh start. Cloning a drive is OK if you've do this often but I would not want to clone a system drive that was 5 years old. All the junk it has collected and stashed away is ported over so there's little change other than drive speed or capacity. 

I just bought a new Evo SSD drive and was all set to swap out my 4 year old Evo SSD C drive but Samsung has an app you can run that tested all my drives and it found everything other than my 1TB spinning drive working 100%. I still might do it just to have that fresh start performance boost.  Sure it's a pain to re authorize all your VST's but last time I did this a year ago it only took me about 6 hours from ground zero with W10 download and install. You computer might run W11. 

The other thing about a fresh start is then I only install VST's and other software as need arises.  They are all stored in the computers Data drive so not a problem.  This spreads the re install chore out over time as well. The trick is to have good back ups of everything you need on your other drives or an external. 

Here's the Samsung App, It gives you full reports on all Samsung SSD drives but it will do a basic speed test of other older drives. 

https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/magician/

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by John Vere

[hockeyjx]

@Jimbo 88 A SSD or NVMe is a great, low cost upgrade. I use Active Disk ( https://www.disk-image.com/index.html ) to clone/backup my machine at least twice a month.

If you can, share you computer specs.

 

[Jimbo 88]

See!  I was right.  This is the best forum...

THANKS for all the great info.

[JnTuneTech]

6 hours ago, azslow3 said:

That was almost "standard" 5 years ago.

Sadly, in my experience, there is no such standard, with major PC vendors anyway. Even Dell has offered some of the most bizarrely configured combinations of features, and at all price ranges, when I have had to order for clients over the years. -You really have to research & be aware of what each system offers. -At least Cakewalk itself will run fine on almost anything, for sure, but as the answers to the OP point out, using SSD storage is at least a reliable option for a simple upgrade.

6 hours ago, azslow3 said:

Also note in most configurations only the first M2 slot supports full performance

It is so hard to find those things out in advance for most folks. But that can be very important if you do a lot of big Cakewalk projects, to be sure. -Sad thing - even trying to buy a "performance" machine, often you will not know those things until after the sale. And even more frustrating - if you try the "bleeding edge" configurations, often you become the guinea pig for troubleshooting new problems... It can be so tough to buy a new system.

Generally though, upgrading something that already works fine, and can use an SSD storage configuration instead of a spinning platter time-bomb, is a great way to go. As mentioned, there may be a few hiccups with licensing issues for things that use disk IDs as validation (not so many - but MS will throw a fit if you change too many devices at one time, FYI), but cloning nowadays is really great for moving to an SSD primary drive without a reinstall. And, theoretically, the SSDs will outlast the spinning disks without degrading, though we are all still running that experiment...  But I know for sure spinning disks degrade significantly over time & use, and are way more prone to physical damage.

Edited April 18, 2023 by JnTuneTech
Sppp...pelling!