[conspire] (forw) Re: (forw) Re: VirtualBox

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (Paul Zander):

> Regarding disk and partition units:The particular machine has a 1TB
> drive.  Originally C: 900 GB.  There were some "hidden" partitions,
> which seem to be standard windoz something.

If I were you, I would spend some effort figuring out what those are and
what they're for.

> Win8 includes a partition manager, but it has limited functionality.

Yes, you'll ideally want to use a real, open source one, run from a live CD
(which impliedly includes USB flash) distribution.

> Regarding flash vs. SSD:Both are solid state memories based on NAND
> cells which have a limited number of write cycles before they
> degrade.  SSD has a enhancements to increase the life by 10X or more. 
> Now that think about it, only a few years ago people were questioning
> if solid state memories were reliable enough to replace spinning
> disks.  

Early on with NAND flash devices, there was a lot of worry about limited
numbers of write/erase cycles and consequent early device death.  As you
say, current production drives have so extended that number of cycles
that nobody is really worried any more.  By the time your 2016 SSDs are
wearing out, you're almost certain to want to replace them with better,
faster, massively higher capacity, cheaper, tinier 2022 SSDs (or whatever).

People who remain worried are, of course, perfectly welcome to stick to
(slow, power-sucking, heat-and-noise-generating) spinning-rust drives,
that aren't exactly immune to device failure, either.