The era of flash drives is behind us, now it's time for something faster - for efficient SSD memories, with speeds exceeding those known from disk drives. And also completely devoid of mechanical elements, which makes it much more durable. In our considerations, we will deal with 3.5-inch solid-state drives, dedicated to desktop computers due to their dimensions. Their size makes them unsuitable for internal drives for portable device such as laptops.
3.5 SSD
The installation of the 3.5-inch SSD in the housing is the same as for the 3.5-inch HDD - place it on our hard drive on a specially prepared shelf, and then connect it to the appropriate connector on the power supply cabling and to the SATA III/II socket. on the motherboard. Screwing the disk to the housing will ensure its stability.
Due to the older technology, this type of drives is usually characterized by weaker write and read parameters compared to newer SSD media. They are equipped with the support of the SATA III / II interface, which in the case of SATA II additionally limits their performance.
Currently, SSD drives in the card format, plugged into the PCI-E interface are used for desktop computers. They are characterized by even higher write and read parameters than SSDs with a SATA interface.
Why Are There Few 3.5 SSDs?
When you plan to buy a 3.5 inch SSD and search it online, you can see many retailers listed in the search result including Amazon, Newegg, eBay, Ebuyer, etc. yet, when you click into the page, you may find among the listed items, few are actually SSD or even no one matches your search.
Instead, most of the results are HDDs or 2.5" SSDs.
Since the search function of those online retailers hardly fails, it must be the reason that there are actually a few SSD of 3.5" size. Then, why is it so?
Why are there so few 3.5-inch SSD? Is it just because the demand for this kind of drive is little? Or, is it that 2.5-inch SSDs are mostly needed on laptops? The probably reasons are as the following ones:
1. Demand of Consumers
In general, laptops sale more than desktops. Since laptops are compatible with the 2.5-inch size of hard drives, to meet most customers’ needs, hard disk manufacturers will produce more 2.5 SSDs than 3.5 SSDs.
2. Compatibility
Compared to 2.5" SSD, 3.5" ones are less compatible. Even if your hard drive bay is for a 3.5-inch disk and you have a 2.5-inch drive, you can mount your current 2.5-inch drive with mounting kit adapters and the adapters are relatively inexpensive compared to buy a new 3.5-inch SSD.
What’s more? A lot of new desktop and server cases are designed to have at least one native 2.5-inch drive mount. To install an SSD, if it is 2.5 inches, in some situations, it is just a matter of installation; in other situations, it is simply a matter of density and you are able to fit more 2.5" SSDs in the same space as 3.5" SSD.
This happens more in server cases than desktop cases.
3. Matter of Physical Space
Since there is little demand for 3.5-inch SSDs, will they disappear in the hard drive market? No, it will not. One of the reasons is that they allow for larger platters with a larger disk enclosure.
Thus, a 3.5" hard drive generally has a larger disk capacity. Yet, a large enough SSD requiring a 3.5-inch design will be extremely expensive, which won’t be accepted by most users.
4. Manufacturing Problem
It costs less to build one enclosure design than two. To save cost, manufacturers would like to produce the most popular hard drive enclosure of 2.5" size instead of the 3.5" one.
So, there are few companies that produce 3.5-inch SSDs.
Is It Possible to Buy 3.5 SSD?
Since there are few SSDs of 3.5 inches, am I able to purchase one somewhere? Many computer users may ask such questions. Let’s discuss this topic in detail.
For laptops, you can find many 3.5-inch SSDs in the market. Yet, for desktops, there are few but they do exist.
By searching “3.5 inch internal solid state drive” on Amazon, you can find several items that match your requirements. And, it seems that most of the matches are from the brand OCZ.
Even there are 3.5" SSDs for you to buy, they are very expensive compared to consumer SSDs. The large form factor SSDs are for large business enterprise configurations.
Some 3.5 SSDs on the Market
Though the 3.5-inch SSDs are few, they do exist and below are some of them.
#1 HP 653122-B21 3.5-inch Solid State Drive
This HP 3.5-inch SSD adopts a 3.0 Gb/s SATA data transfer interface, MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash memory, and wire device connectivity. Its capacity is 100 GB and its current price is 301 pounds on Amazon.
The product dimensions are 15.24 x 27.97 x 22.86 cm, that’s 6 x 11 x 9 inch, and weighs 480.81 grams.
#2 OCZ Vertex 2 3.5-inch Solid State Drive (OCZSSD3-2VTX360G)
This black 3.5 SSD hard drive is equipped with SATA II 3.0 Gb/s interface with a maximum read speed of 285 MB/s, max write speed up to 275 MB/s, sustained write speed up to 250 MB/s. Its dimensions are 5.8 x 4 x 1 inch, and capacity is 360 GB.
#3 Lenovo 5300 480 Gb Solid State Drive
The 5300 Entry SATA SSD is a new SSD for Lenovo ThinkSystem servers. It makes use of Micro 96-layer 3D NAND flash memory technology, a SATA 6 GB/s interface, and provides an affordable solution for read-intensive applications.
The drive offers 480 GB data storage, a high-read speed of 540 MB/s, and a high-write speed of 410 MB/s.
#4 HPE P07924-B21 3.5" SATA Internal Solid State Drive
This 3.5-inch SSD produced by HPE offers high performance, exceptional reliability, and efficiency for faster business results. It is ideal for big data analytics; achieves higher IOPs to enhance data center performance; maintains data accuracy by full data-path error detection; as well as adopts 12 Gb/s SAS, 6 Gb/s SATA & NVMe.
#5 Imation S-Class 27523 3.5" Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Imation S-Class 3.5 in SSD enables its users to operate faster with sustained sequential read speed up to 130MBps, and write speed up to 120MBps, guaranteed by the SATA II interface. Designed to withstand wear and tear, this type of drive features a rugged design for extreme endurance and performance in a harsh environment, such as 0-70°C (32-158°F).
How to Manage 3.5 SSD?
By managing 3.5 solid state drive, here it means to manage its storage space and make use of it. Usually, users use an SSD in order to gain better performance like faster data read & write speed, secure data storage environment as well as lower power consumption.
Therefore, they tend to install a computer operating system (OS) on the SSD or rely on it to store crucial data backup.
Then, how to install OS on an SSD, especially the current system you are using? Actually, it is called migrate or transfer OS from an old hard drive (usually HDD) to a new SSD. To achieve this migration or transferring, you need a professional and reliable program such as MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Its Migrate OS to SSD feature is specially developed for system migration while ensuring a bootable OS after transfer.
Step 1. In the main interface of the software, select Migrate OS to SSD/HD Wizard on the left panel under the Wizard column.
Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose the right method to migrate your system disk. Then, click Next to continue.
I would like to replace my system disk with another hard disk. This method will copy all the partitions on the source disk to the destination drive.
I would like to move my operating system to another hard disk. And keep the original hard disk in my computers. This method will only copy system required partitions to target SSD.
Step 3. Pick destination disk. Here, you should find and select the connected new SSD as your destination for receiving a copy of the OS.
Then, click Next to go on.
Step 4. Review the changes you are going to make to the destination 3.5 SSD. The default copy option is the first one below.
Copy Options:
Fit partitions to entire disk. This option will occupy the whole storage space on the destination drive.
Copy partitions without resizing. This option will only occupy the same size of source disk on the destination disk. It is an exact duplicate of the original drive. Therefore, if you choose this method, your destination disk must be no small than the source disk.
If you are not satisfied with the layout and of your new drive, you can switch the copy option.
Step 5. If you want to boot from the destination disk, remember to configure it as the default boot drive in BIOS after system migration. Read the notice and click Finish.
Step 6. Preview the changes especially on the destination 3.5 SSD. If that is what you wish, just click Apply on the bottom left corner to save the changes.
You can view what operations this OS migration will bring to your destination drive in the left Operations Pending part.
Step 7. Wait until the operations finish. Finally, close the application and you have successfully migrated the operating system to your new drive.
Final Words
SSDs are relatively new players in the storage media market. It is believed to be much faster than ordinary hard drives.
It's unclear whether SSDs will completely replace traditional hard drives, especially as cloud storage is playing on the stage. SSDs are falling in price, but they are still significantly more expensive to completely replace the terabytes of data that some users have stored on their personal computers.
Cloud storage is also not free, and we will need personal storage for a long time to come. Local hard drives will not disappear until an available and sufficiently fast wireless access network covers the entire surface of the Earth, and even more so, all the more so as something better will be created during this time.
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