Replacing HDs with SSD. Anyone Done This yet?

[John L]

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I'm curious as to whether or not anyone has actually replaced their existing hard drive with that of the new Solid State Drives(SSD)? And if so, what is their experience so far?

These things still cost a great deal, compared to regular hard drives, but they are supposed to be lightning fast, which can make a Plain Jane computer act like a high performance machine.

And here is something else. I have been noticing that new gaming machines tend to have two hard drives on board the machines. The main one is the SSD, and the information storage drive is a regular hard drive. And too, the ones I have seen so far are not using the 7200rpm drives either. All I am seeing are 5900rpm drives for storage. Is there a good reason for this, because the SSD makes up for the slower spin of the secondary hard drive?

I just purchased a refurbished HP Pavilion p7-1235 AMD Fusion A8-5500 Quad-Core 3.2GHz 8GB 1TB. Its not the highest performance AMD, which is the FX Steamroller, but the FX has had some performance problems. So I went with a less expensive quad core unit that is still in production. I was figuring that perhaps a 120-128Gig SSD, supplemented with a much larger drive for volume storage, would make a good bit of difference.

Any suggestions, testimonials, or recommendations? I have already paid for the HP, and it is shipped. So I can't change my mind there. And I sort of have this thing in my heart for AMD(the little guy). Plus, HP does a nice job of placing all their necessary recovery information directly on the hard drive, instead of expecting the owner to go out and download/the recovery discs(Gateway)

Oh, I just purchased/upgraded my copy of Acronis TrueImage to the 2013 Home edition. Cloning discs will be no problem. If this works, I will probably do this to my other machine too.

And lastly, does anyone know of a site that fully explains all this? I've found articles and videos on how to clone to the SSD, but nothing about having/using the combo drives mentioned above. I'm sure some place has all this available.

[ralgith]

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I don't know of anyone who is taking an existing install and cloning it to the SSD, just of people using them when installing from scratch. That said, it should be just like cloning between 2 standard drives as far as the software is concerned. I have a friend who just upgraded to an SSD and his computer is fully started at the desktop in 7 seconds. That right there is the main point of the SSD, lightning response from the OS and installed software.

That said, it isn't trivial to make your "data" folders (My Documents, My Music, etc...) move to another drive. It can be done, but it does require the tweakui tool from Micro$uck... or at least on WinXP you did. Seems on Win7/8 there is an easier way. See this article for that explanation.

So, all in all this should be a very straightforward operation for you. I suggest you don't delete the OS from the original drive until you have a working system, and in fact leave it disconnected while loading your system image onto the SSD. Last tip, why bother to buy an image software when there is a great one free that is used by a high percentage of the professionals... including me?

Other references:
3rd Party PowerTools for Windows Vista/7 (and Win8 according to the comments) - I will not vouch for this since I don't use Winblows myself

[AnthonyG]

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I never cloned my OS I just did fresh install, I have transferred files though, your speed boost is the ultimate reason for doing it, SSD's are getting better in quality and in capacity however they are still a newer technology for consumer market. The failure rate of SSD over traditional harddrive is greater, also with tradition harddrive there are sometimes warning signs of a drive getting ready to go and crashing so you get time to move important data before total failure. I am unsure about how data recovery works on SSD's I believe it would be easier aslong as their is no physical damage to the modules.

[John L]

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All valid points. First, the computer I am thinking about is the brand new one that is due to arrive in a couple of days. this one right here. It will have what comes installed on it. I'll install essential programs, such as my Thunderbird, Opera browser, and a few others, which will always be part of my computer mix. Then I'll just put that drive away and use another one for the storage portion of the computer, which will keep the actual programs away from the stored files. I am doing that already and really like that proceedure. I generally keep everything off the primary disc drive, and store everything else on separate drives.

And I can see where the SSDs are a bit less dependable in some respects. However, I expect that to change very soon. Anyway, if users manage to keep all that valuable storage files/folders away from the OS disc, information will not be lost if the SSD crashes. Its just good insurance and also means the primary drive can be small.

Note: I see that particular computer keeps selling like hotcakes. A couple of weeks ago the same one was on sale at Geeks.com, and it sold out before I had a chance to even read my daily email on it. This time, it took an entire 24 hours to sell out. I'm guessing HP ships Geeks several pallets of these little fellows with each shipment, and gives them enough of a discount to really make it all worth while having these special sales. I'll let you all know how it performs.

[ralgith]

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I find the built in WLAN kinda neat. However I don't see that as a great price since it doesn't come with a monitor. For only about $40 more (pre-labor costs sadly) I can build about the same machine and add in a 27" flat panel LCD monitor while I'm at it. Of course, then the labor knocks it up another $100, so blech.

Still, it looks like a decent machine from the specs.

BTW: You could have gone with an F1 core, I'm using one and its stable as a rock at 57 degrees Celsius while running all 4 cores at 100% 24/7 for Folding@Home...

holy shit my points output (I'm dubrin) considering that before this machine and my server I was lucky to break 2k/day, with the server but before this desktop was only about 5k/day and now I'm over 12k/day I'm sadly the only one currently active on my team... you guys should all join. Just download folding and when you put in your information set your team number as 34796. You just make up a username FYI, though if you want a passkey you'll need to go here, where once again you make up your username - but it has to match the one you use in the software!

You guys really should do it IMO, its for a good cause and personally I'm doing it because of Alzheimers. I've known multiple people who've gotten it in their golden years and its a very sad thing. Not that curing Mad Cow and other such isn't good too