Why SSD over HDD

drunkmonkey

pavb2 wrote: »

No not using one at moment wife has a 1 tb one.

There's your hard drive caddy, open it up and put the ssd in it just to clone it, then put it back together before she notices, portable hard drive is a hard drive caddy with a case on it. Usually only held together by 1 or 2 screws.

pavb2

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00P73B1E4/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2OPXVFY8SXUE2&coliid=I30BRKZYCJJH8D&psc=1

Going to go with this SSD I've got a 6 year old HP laptop running vista which is very slow, freezes, gets hot etc etc hence the reason for getting a new one but I'm going to put this into it first and see how it performs.

drunkmonkey

That's at a good price there on Amazon uk right now.

You laptop is probably fine, vista is awful, that and upgrading to Windows 10 would do a lot for it..

And before you ask http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ie/windows-8/upgrade-from-windows-vista-xp-tutorial

You should be able to pick up windows 7 licence cheap maybe €20

Capt'n Midnight

Deleted User wrote: »

An SSD of that size will severely limit you without an external.

If it's going to be your primary storage drive then take the performance hit and go large HDD.

In terms of why SSD? Their start up and access speeds are outstanding but the trade off is cost for size

If your laptop has a CD drive then replace it with a bay for the second drive. So primary drive is SSD and ordinary HDD for your media collection. you can buy them on the inter web for buttons http://www.buyincoins.com/?r=search/index&cid=0&keyword=bay

If you don't want to open up the laptop you can change boot order in BIOS/Setup

Cloning isn't that difficult
Windows can shrink the partition on the HDD, before you fill it up. Then use any cloning tool to copy to the SDD. Then use DiskPart ,select disk , select partition, set id or windows will think the are exactly the same and only let you see one of them. you can then unshrink the HDD partition OR use it for backup and create a new partition for your data.

Cheap 240 GB drives come up every so often so no point in going any smaller.

There was an offer on 960GB SSD's on bargain alerts.

If you have a NAS at home do you really need storage on the laptop too ?

Capt'n Midnight

Also SSD's are more reliable than a rust coated glass disk spinning at high speed

pavb2

I had a thought I also have a desktop PC which has Windows 7 and has less junk on it than the laptop. can I clone the HDD on this and put it on the laptop?

KERSPLAT!

Another option is to do a clean install on the SSD, start from scratch. Just make sure you have any important documents, etc backed up somewhere so you can transfer them to the SSD when finished.

You'll need the OS disk and key or even download the .iso from the Microsoft website and burn it to a USB, that's what I did. Again you'll also need the key.

I'm sure cloning is easy as everyone else has said but when I did it with the Samsung software, it didn't work properly. I didn't have a backup but didn't mind and was happy with the clean install

MarkAnthony

pavb2

To give you all an update I had an old hp elite 2540p laptop 2gb ram running vista so I put the 500gb SSD into it. As stated on here it was very easy to do took about 1 hour to transfer 100 gb.

I wanted to do a clean clone and get rid of vista but I'd lost my vista licence details and disc. I ordered a copy of Windows 7 but the one I ordered was for 64 bit whereas my system was only suitable for 32 bit. This was fine as Amazon took it back.

Anyway the performance was spectacular no freezing easy to access I compared start up time with my work i5 machine and the elite is faster it runs hot but I think this is normal I've cleaned fan etc.

I was fortunate in returning Windows I don't think Windows 7 would have improved performance but I could be wrong though saved myself 30 €.

So thanks for all the help I received here special mention for DrunkMonkey I couldn't and wouldn't have attempted it without you all.

Hopefully this will do me for the time being if I do decide to buy a laptop I would probably buy something with a lot of RAM very little HDD and put a 500 SSD in.

TerrorFirmer

Vista is not great, Win7 is much better. Also, 64-bit will work just fine on the laptop. Your Vista version was probably 32-bit, but these days the vast majority of machines come with 64-bit OS.

orm0nd

hi folks

been lurking in the background on this thread for some time,

any how took the plunge & picked up a 250 GB Samsung on Amazon

very happy & really transformed my old HP laptop ...I5 windows 10

only problem is I'm unable to access my old HDD for external storage

using the same caddy I used for cloning,

any pointers ?

thanks

manutd

Does anyone know where to download a genuine iso of Windows 7 home edition for a clean install on to a ssd. I have tried Microsoft but they don't give it for OEM anymore.

Capt'n Midnight

orm0nd wrote: »

only problem is I'm unable to access my old HDD for external storage

using the same caddy I used for cloning,

Because they were cloned both drives will have the same Disk Signature so windows will see that as a conflict.

you can use DISKPART to change the sig on the old HDD

orm0nd

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Because they were cloned both drives will have the same Disk Signature so windows will see that as a conflict.

you can use DISKPART to change the sig on the old HDD

Thanks got it sorted

for any body like my self who is a complete rooky with pc's & having similar issues, here is an excellent video

Capt'n Midnight

Why SSD over HDD ?




Putting an SSD in an old laptop .

pavb2

Update

Things were going really well I was impressed with the speed of the laptop but now I've made the mistake of upgrading from Vista to Windows 7.

I keep getting messages that the programme is not responding, the screen freezes and I get a delay between hitting the key and letters coming up on screen the screen when typing.

Appreciate it if Anyone Can help.

drunkmonkey

Yea upgrade to Windows 10 now from Windows 7 while it's still free, you may have to download a little program from the Microsoft site to trigger the upgrade.

pavb2

Update

Thanks drunk monkey you came up trumps again. I upgraded to Windows 10 and everything is now working fine.

5star02707

that;s the way to go since vista is outdated and soon Windows 7 will not have any updates so to fix the issue jump to 10 while still free. win win for u