I'm planning to learn web development, make projects so that I can apply for jobs.

I currently have a 1 TB hard drive. I still have 650-700 GB of space left on hard drive. I've used it for more than 10000 hrs and the disk health isn't looking great either.

So, I'm switching to SSD.

Every penny counts because we don't make that much income. Thus, we can't be extravagant. While buying 1TB SSD would still be utilized in some way or other, but I need higher return of what I pay(ie utilize sufficiently for web development purposes) Companies give a new laptop if you start working in them (Not to interns). After getting a job, buying laptops won't be that hard although a laptop that serves my purpose will cost 7 months of new dev's salary here.

Here's my software requirements. The storage are just my guesses, your insights would be valuable here.

1) Windows 10/11. It'll take maximum 64 GB.
2) Microsoft Office Professional containing word,doc, ppt, excel. 4 GB
3) Brave browser (Not considering downloads for browser. Downloads can go to hard disk)
4) Chrome browser 100 MB for install, ? for cache?...etc please tell
5) Firefox browser 100MB for install
6) images2pdf softwares At most 1GB size(estimate)
7) cold turkey type softwar/ org emacs (only one) At most 1GB size(estimate)
IDE(probably VScode or pycharm whatever supports web development and is easy to use for beginners)
9) Web development installations (for 1 stack like MERN, MEAN etc) Not sure about it
10) Viber/Telegram Downloads (Can be removed regularly on unwanted basis) 2GB but most of it can always be deleted or transferred back to hard drive if they're really important. Or at all install viber outside of SSD.
11) Save codes and notes on Joplin while learning. Notes will contain images+codes+text. Not sure about estimate? They can be printed after some time and delete from laptop.
12) Note taking app on Joplin

My files storage requirements (of current):

1) Important docs 34.7MB
2) Study materials that needs to be saved forever 41.5 GB ( I can instead just keep a name of the book and download it later as they're all downloaded from online. Almost/More than 85% storage can be freed up here)
3) Very important courses downloads 103.16 GB
4) Unimportant courses 206.1 GB (I downloaded them online, It's very less likely that I'm going to use them. They're not very important. But I could need them if a course is really good or if the topic is really tough and I need multiple insights)

In my region, If 1 TB hard drive costs x, then 128GB pen drive costs 0.307x and 256GB SSD 0.538x and 512GB SSD costs 1.153x.

Can you share your ideas about what should I do?

My view:
1) Get 128GB pen drive to store 103.16GB Very Important Courses
2) Buy 256GB SSD. 64GB for OS and 192GB for files.

Would this plan work? Is there better approach to this?Remind of the things that I'm letting go unnoticed at the momet as well.

The only difference between ssd and hdd is speed - if you can't afford to pay extra for speed then don't. Buy a replacement hdd and wait until you can afford to. Pen drives are not for storing data, they are for transferring a copy of it.

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https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Yeah, what Lardman said.
Storing VERY IMPORTANT data into a pendrive is like begging for trouble.

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SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Hmm. I'm even more confused. I need SSD because of few problems that I'm facing:

1) 100% disk usage frequently.

2) I googled and people told me that the problem was "You need SSD in 2022 compulsorily". I found it hard to believe. Because SSD and HDD are just storage devices. And SSD that I support will be of ~65MBps and my current Hard disk even after 5 years spins at 65MBps.

3) whenever I tried using pycharm, it used to crash again and again. Contacting anyone never helped as I quickly figured out nobody loved reading crash reports.

4) Even VS code was so laggy, so SLOW. I must've uninstalled and re-installed it 20+ times.

That's how I decide to get a SSD.

But along with SSD, I'd also get a RAM of 8GB as it's cost effective. And I also require to open 30+ tabs at once and RAMs are the must needed things for it.

Another purpose of upgrade is even if it doesn't help me at all, I can use this laptop for other purposes even in the future for longer time. i.e Even if I have to buy a new laptop after all of this, this current laptop I can use for multimedia consuming and thus save the resources of other new laptop.

If I can get a pen drive that has 2-5 year warranty, why won't a pen drive be great? Any other affordable storage method you can name of? I'd store the same data on my current OLD HD alogn with pen drive.

I'm in deep confusion currently because I'm failing to get insights by myself.

I'm switching to SSD because:

1) Pycharm used to crash forever. When I asked in forums, after submitting crash report the last destination was "Add SSD, don't use HDD in 2022".

2) VS code used to hang and lag, it was unusable. People were surprised why VS code which is a light weight and loved software was like that. Again the final conclusion that I Got here was "Get a SSD".

3) 100% disk usage used to happen randomly even after fresh re-install. The final answer I got for this was "Get a SSD".

The whole sentiment was "SSD are must in 2022 as everything is getting optimized for SSDs". I never took it seriously because for me HDD and SSD were same thing. The speed of my 2.5 inch sata ssd won't be more than my current hard disk (60MB/s) so I'm not even 100% sure if this will solve the issue. But nevertheless the upgrade is much needed.

I'm also adding 8GB RAM.

So why ask us about decisions you have already made based on recommendations from another forum? The rule of thumb regarding storage calculation is however much you currently need in total and double it.

As for why pen drives are a bad idea for storage: they're cheap, mass produced items often made from rejected or recycled components and are not designed for long term storage, that doesn't include the physical limitations of being easily broken, corrupted, stolen or lost.

Whatever you decide, you should also look at a proper backup solution if you're storing any type of data you consider important. Disk drives are cheap data recovery services or data loss is not.

_________________
Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Ask a web developer?

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Joep - http://www.disktuna.com - video & photo repair & recovery service

I didn't ask anywhere. I saw those answers. That's why sir.

This thread has got to be a troll. Next it will be a 20 post thread on the Language, then the OS, then the IDE.

If this is a real question, stop worrying about all this nonsense and start learning some coding. You can sort your storage out when you need to, just get your basics in order and the rest will sort itself out.

Time is precious, don't waste it on the small stuff