follow up question: is my motherboard capable of handling two hard drives? I've googled it & can't find anything confirming whether it can or not https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z270-GAMING-PRO-CARBON.html
answered I have a PC that I want to eventually get a SSD and a terabyte snaildrive with the next stimulus & wipe & reinstall the OS onto the SSD, but if I can buy a terabyte snaildrive that's straight up better than what I already have I wanna just wipe my computer now & put the OS on the new one.
someone is selling this for $5 in my area https://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_details.php?lang=en&model=WDC%20WD10EAVS. This is what I already have in my PC https://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_details.php?lang=en&model=SEAGATE%20ST3500418AS
For some reason the format for the specs on this site are completely different so my brain cant figure; is the new hard drive an upgrade from the old one (aside from just being better size)? Should I buy the cheap bigdrive and just wait to get a SSD to put the OS onto & wait to wipe or is the new drive just a straight up upgrade & I should just get it & put the OS onto that right away?
If you buy a used drive check the SMART information and run a full disk scan (this will take hours most likely) before putting anything valuable on it. You can do this using various tools. Speedfan is one for windows but there are plenty of others (don't mess with other stuff in speedfan unless you know what you're doing though, you can fuck your PC if you mess with clocks/voltages).
A note about the $5 drive. WD green drives are made targeting low electricity usage and efficiency and you'll likely see better performance off your existing drive. WD-Blue is what I'd suggest but if you're just using it for storage and not critical OS files or whatever it shouldn't matter and for $5 it's not easy to beat (assuming of course it isn't in a failing state which the SMART and running a full disk scan should inform you of).
🤔 hm, maybe I should have my PC wired up for dual-hard drives using this terabyte snaildrive, then when I do get my SSD just unplug my old snaildrive & plug the SSD in in its place
Or keep all three. Store backups of critical data/memes on your 500GB drive if you really don't need it for anything actively. Just make sure you have the right cables. You need SATA III for data (which many drives new don't come with anyways) and then power which should be off a connector from your power supply, typically a long cable with multiple power connectors.
One warning I'll mention about SSDs, although I've never had one fail personally, when they do fail they often do so catastrophically. Old spinning disks usually give warnings and indications and fail gradually and you can often recover data, with SSDs not always so. SSDs also have a maximum number of writes so if you buy one used I would be sure to check the SMART data on it as well within the return period to make sure it isn't near the end of its reliable life as far as total terabytes written.