Upgrading to SSD

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I just ordered a Samsung EVO 840 SSD for my laptop, 120 GB. I don't suppose that I need to do anything to "set up" for this swap, right, like defrag the drive before I copy everything over? In fact, the catalyst for doing this is because I heard lots of weird hard drive clicking last night, and the computer is 10 years old, so it's probably due for a change. I'd like to stress the current drive as little as possible, besides, obviously, ghosting it over to the new drive. I understand that Samsung's SSDs come with a handy ghosting application, yes?

I'm looking forward to the new speed. It's an older Celeron M 1.7 GHz with 2 GB of RAM and Windows 7. Much of the time I'm waiting on it, that HDD light is flashing and I can hear it churning. It's probably an older 5,400 rpm drive. Other than the drive possibly aging, this has been a great laptop. It's a Compaq Presario C306 with a nice glossy 15.6" display and a full-size keyboard, DVD burner, built-in wi-fi, etc. It was pretty decent for 10 years ago, and still works great today.

I've been using it more lately...I've got SQL Server 2008 R2 on it and Visual Studio Express 2013 that I use at work for doing some off-line development so I don't screw up a production server!
 
Wow - I remember when the Pentium M and Celeron M had a cult-like following for a while!

Defragging puts unnecessary stress on the SDD from what I understand. I have never defragged mine and it's still quick ... or as quick as a netbook from 2009 can be haha.
 
I have an old 60GB OCZ Vertex II.

I didn't have to do anything special to use it.

It has been the best upgrade I have ever made to a PC.

I have Windows and 1 game (FarCry 3) on it and it is really nice to load stuff super fast.

I want to get another one as this one is too small and I hate having to uninstall a game and download another from Steam to play it.

I don't think I could ever go back to playing a PC game off of a standard hard drive.

The next one I am looking to get is a 256GB Crucial MX100. It is 135$ around here.

Enjoy!
 
Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
Is that thing running a SATA I interface?



That would be my concern. On laptops it can be hard to get any sort of adapter in there.

Otherwise I just use seatools to clone and it's instant upgrade.
 
Do not defrag an SSD... just puts unnecessary wear and tear on it.

In fact, once you install Windows make sure you turn the scheduled defrag setting off.
 
If I were the OP, the only thing Id be considering is doing fresh and clean installs of everything, rather than ghosting over 10 years of software corruption.

I recognize that this is not always possible or efficient.

I too have an old ATA application that I am considering doing an SSD swap into. Are there any natively ATA SSDs that are any good? I am not sure if an adapter would fit (I saw adapters mentioned above and know nothing about them...).
 
Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
Originally Posted By: bepperb
That would be my concern.


My concern is that it's PATA.

I looked up the specs of his machine. It says it's SATA, but it's worth double checking.
 
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
If I were the OP, the only thing Id be considering is doing fresh and clean installs of everything, rather than ghosting over 10 years of software corruption.

Agreed. Start from scratch.
 
It is SATA. I like you guys' idea; I'll start from scratch. I have the original software that came with the computer, XP MCE. I'll install that and then install Windows 7 right over it. That's what I've got now. I'll just rebuild it onto the new drive.

Heck, I actually think I should be able to put 7 directly on it, without doing the XP install first. I don't think 7 can do an in-place upgrade over XP. I don't remember...I put 7 on this computer about 2 years ago...
 
Installing from scratch on an SSD using XP? If the SSD is blank with no partitions on XP install it will create a partition and won't align it correctly. SSDs prefer 4K alignment.

If you can, create the partition on the SSD using Windows 7 or higher. Once it's created, proceed with the XP install and only allow it to 'quick format.'
 
Originally Posted By: Nick R
You can't go from XP to 7. You'd have to upgrade to Vista, and then to 7.


Yeah, I'm thinking that even though I "upgraded" from XP on this computer to 7, it was not an in-place upgrade and 7 wiped the drive. I should get the SSD tomorrow (Amazon Prime!), and my plan will be to start with the 7 install disc and see if I can't get it running that way.

Worst case, I can ghost my mechanical drive over to it. I put 7 on it a few years ago, so it was a clean install then. I don't have a ton of application files on this machine (just Office, SQL 2008, and Visual Studio), so it doubt that there's much "bloat" on this drive.
 
Originally Posted By: 97tbird
Enable AHCI if it's possible.


The PhoenixBIOS software doesn't have anything labeled "AHCI", but it does have something called "Native SATA mode" that I can either enable or disable. It's enabled now. I presume that's the same thing?
 
I am really not sure.
Someone more savvy will hopefully answer.
On my win 7 laptop, it clearly states SATA III mode as AHCI.
Never seen "Native" mode, so can't really comment.
 
"Native SATA" is the equivalent of ACHI you would disable it if using an older hardrive or an older operating system like XP.

Ya just do a drive-drive copy, worst case scenario is you reinstall anyway. It was good you did upgrade to WIN 7 since it supports TRIM whereas XP does not. TRIM allows the OS to inform the SSD which areas of data you do longer need. While idle it can handle this and delete those areas to make them ready for writing again.

WHen you empty the recycling bin you actually don't delete anything most of the time. You just tell he OS these files and the area on the hd they are stored in is no longer required. Eventually they will get overwritten on a regular HD however in a SSD they most first be erased before any new data can be written.

TRIM allows the SSD & OS to do this proactively in the background and communicate what and where is gone. You would noticing progressively slower write speeds as the drive filled up if this wasn't enabled.
 
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I installed 7 on the new SSD and it wouldn't activate. D'oh! I forgot...it's an upgrade version of 7 and an existing OS HAS to be on the HDD before installing (even though it's still a clean install). Okay...forget that...I wasn't going to spend the time installing XP only to install 7 on top of that.

So I installed the Samsung Data Migration software on my old HDD and it copied everything over to the new SSD and it runs like a champ. It's probably twice as fast doing most R/W intensive operations. Overall, the computer boots (from power button on to desktop screen) in about 18 seconds. Suspend/resume is pretty instantaneous. Very happy with it so far.
 
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