Hello everyone,

We are planning an upgrade for one of our older site servers running a [mention your specific platform, e.g., Vantage, Citect, etc.] Historian. The machine currently uses a standard SATA hard drive, and we are looking to significantly improve data access times and overall system responsiveness.

We have identified a https://serverorbit.com/solid-state-drives-ssd/sata-6gbps-ssd/1tb-m-2-80mm in the M.2-80mm form factor as a potential candidate. We prefer a SATA-based M.2 over NVMe for compatibility with our existing server motherboard.

I wanted to consult the community's experience before proceeding:

Reliability & Brand Recommendations: In an industrial environment where the historian is writing data continuously, are there specific brands or models of SATA M.2 SSDs known for better endurance and reliability? We are considering industrial-grade options but are evaluating cost versus benefit.

Imaging & Deployment: What is the most robust method to clone the existing system drive (OS, platform, and historian data) to the new SSD to minimize downtime? Are there any known issues with booting from an M.2 SATA drive on industrial motherboards that we should be aware of?

Performance Impact: Has anyone made a similar upgrade from an HDD to a SATA SSD for a historian or primary server? What was the most noticeable performance improvement you observed in terms of tag query speed or system boot times?

Any insights, lessons learned, or specific product recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help.

The best thing you can do is probably to have a redundant VTScada server. If this is already part of your plan, then you should be good to go and you probably don't need to overthink the disk drives and just have a plan in place for standard PC maintenance.