Sage data on SSHD.

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My office PC, which holds Sage accounts and Payroll data for a 3 user office, is on its last legs. The new PC I am thinking of replacing it with is a mini PC with a solid state drive in it. I would expect the performance to be better for all users,  but a bit concerned with reliability. I do have automatic backups to the cloud turned on in Sage, so in a worst case scenario, I would lose a days data if the drive failed. Any advice would be most welcome.

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  • +1
    verified answer

    Not entirely sure I'm picking up on the question here so forgive me if I have gotten the wrong end of the stick.

    If the query is will Sage 50 Accounts work on a solid state drive then the answer is a simple yes. If the query is around reliability of the hardware then you'd need to consult documentation for the specific machine/drive in question to determine it's reliability - often you will see this noted as 'mean time before failure' (MTBF). If the query is around disaster recovery then it is worth noting that, whilst they are generally more reliable than 'spinning' disks, a solid state drive does not really change the problem and hardware failure is always a possibility.

    If a hard drive which contains your Sage 50 accounts data fails such that you are no longer able to access the data, then your only recourse is to revert to your most recent backup, or to pay a data recovery firm to attempt to recover the data from the dead drive. This is the same for any type of data and for any type of hard drive. So the question you need to ask yourself is what is the risk you are willing to accept in terms of data loss in a disaster recovery situation? If you did hit the worst case scenario is it acceptable that you would need to re-enter a days worth of data? If so then the daily cloud backup you have in place should be fine. If not then you need to adjust your backup schedule to be more frequent. There is of course a balance to be struck as you likely don't want to be performing backups too frequently as this could interfere with your normal usage of the drive.

    Regardless of the backup mechanism and schedule you decide upon my key piece of advice would be to regularly confirm the process is in fact working and you are able to restore data. I've lost count over the years of how many times I've seen people set up a disaster recovery process, never check it is actually working, then later find to their cost that the data they wanted was not actually getting backed up, or was otherwise not possible to restore. Again this is not specific to Sage 50 Accounts data but any type of data and backup/restore process.

    Hop that helps

  • 0 in reply to Darron Cockram

    Thanks for the reply Darron. I think you have answered my question and said what I wanted to hear. I needed confirmation that holding Sage Accounts and Payroll data on a SSHD was no worse than keeping it on a standard HDD. Something in the back of mind gave me a concern that SSHD's had limited read/write functions. But if, as you suggest, there is no difference between an SSHD and a HDD then I should be OK. I have automatic daily backups to Onedrive set up for the end of each day and do check frequently that they are working. I also take regular backups manually. Losing a days work would not be to great an inconvenience if the drive did fail as we are not processing masses of data.

  • 0 in reply to Bill Zawadeckyj
    Something in the back of mind gave me a concern that SSHD's had limited read/write functions.

    There are limits but practically speaking you'd be unlikely to hit a limitation as most modern solid state drives, and Windows itself do a great job at mitigating the limitations of the hardware.

    But if, as you suggest, there is no difference between an SSHD and a HDD then I should be OK

    Just to be clear, when I say there is no difference this is just in terms of disaster recovery and that any type of hard drive has a chance to fail. A solid state drive does have significant performance advantages over a 'spinning' drive and this alone generally makes them a worthy upgrade/replacement.

    I have automatic daily backups to Onedrive set up for the end of each day and do check frequently that they are working. I also take regular backups manually. Losing a days work would not be to great an inconvenience if the drive did fail as we are not processing masses of data.

    Great. Sounds like you can just continue the same regime with the new drive then.

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  • 0 in reply to Bill Zawadeckyj
    Something in the back of mind gave me a concern that SSHD's had limited read/write functions.

    There are limits but practically speaking you'd be unlikely to hit a limitation as most modern solid state drives, and Windows itself do a great job at mitigating the limitations of the hardware.

    But if, as you suggest, there is no difference between an SSHD and a HDD then I should be OK

    Just to be clear, when I say there is no difference this is just in terms of disaster recovery and that any type of hard drive has a chance to fail. A solid state drive does have significant performance advantages over a 'spinning' drive and this alone generally makes them a worthy upgrade/replacement.

    I have automatic daily backups to Onedrive set up for the end of each day and do check frequently that they are working. I also take regular backups manually. Losing a days work would not be to great an inconvenience if the drive did fail as we are not processing masses of data.

    Great. Sounds like you can just continue the same regime with the new drive then.

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