SSD (Solid State Drive) are the new future of hard drives. Every year SSD are becoming more and more popular and slowly replacing the HDD (Hard Disk Drive). Especially in laptops, SSD is becoming more and more common.
The pros and cons of SSD
An SSD works much faster thanks to the fixed microchips, the SSD is technically similar to a RAM or USB memory. The classic HDD, on the other hand, consists of movable individual parts. This has the disadvantage that the read and scream head must be mechanically guided to the appropriate place where the data is stored (as with a CD/DVD).
An SSD makes sense especially when the operating system is installed on it. Windows starts so much faster and called programs open up to 4x faster, than otherwise with the HDD.
SSD also have disadvantages, an SSD has a limited lifetime, such as rewritability is limited. Unlike classic hard drives, SSD can not be overwritten indefinitely without losing performance. In addition, there is a slightly larger probability of a total defect with current SSD than with HDD. A power failure can in some rare cases create a total data loss, that's why with SSD a data backup is a must.
Increase SSD life
Temporary file accesses wear out an SSD quite a bit, as a lot of read and write operations are performed here. Therefore, it is worth changing the Windows temporary folder as well as the temporary folder used by Langmeier Backup to a classic HDD (non-SSD) disk.
Change Windows temporary folder
One of the folders which gets overwritten the most is the Windows temporary folder. Almost every installation, download, etc uses this folder to store temporary files, these are often deleted by themselves after use, but sometimes this has to be done manually afterwards. So if you have two hard drives in use, the SSD for Windows and a HDD for the data, then we recommend to change the temporary Windows folder to a partition of the HDD.
Here you can read about how to change the Windows temporary folder:
Langmeier Backup also uses the Windows temporary folder in some cases, especially for Compressed Backups. The ZIP archives are first created on the Temp folder and then moved to the backup destination. Langmeier Backup 9.1 can work around this, however, by allowing you to specify the temp folder you want Langmeier Backup to use directly in Langmeier Backup. Here is how to do this:
Under "Options --> Global settings --> Expert settings --> Use own temp path".
The specified folder will then be used for all Langmeier backup - backups where a temporary folder is needed. Use a folder on an HDD.
This is a small but mighty advantage, the backups will be done, Windows will work just as fast and the lifetime of the SSD will be increased.
Sebastian Müller is partner and top customer support at Langmeier Software, making him the best person to talk to about Langmeier backup backup solutions.