Transfer to SSD Hard Drive - done.

I have a little Dell Inspiron laptop that I use for trips.
Its a few years old now so thought I would see if I could breath some life into it.

Bought myself a SanDisk Ultra II SSD 240 GB Sata III 2.5-inch Internal SSD from Amazon (£77).
First went into Disk Manager and shrank the primary partition so that it would fit on the new (slightly smaller) SSD.
Using AOMEIU Backupper (freeware) - carried out a system backup of laptop onto a spare external drive.
Restored the backup onto the SSD.
Popped the SSD into the laptop.
Done

Worked first time. No hassle. No glitches.
What a difference in performance. Just superb. Now boots to Windows from cold in less than 20 seconds.

Highly recommended for breathing new life into an aging computer.

Full instructions here....
http://www.backup-utility.com/features/system-clone.html

SSDs are great - I have bought several over the years - some of the early ones were slower than a standard hard disc so make sure you get a fast one

Might be trying to teach granny how to sick eggs but make sure the OS knows it is an SSD and in particular that defrag is off. Your SSD will have a short 6 month lifespan if you don't. Depending on OS it knows with a fresh install it is going on an SSD and sets itself but with win 7 anyway and a migrate it doesn't and will trash the drive.

We found this the hard way at work!

Marki_GSA said:

Might be trying to teach granny how to sick eggs but make sure the OS knows it is an SSD and in particular that defrag is off. Your SSD will have a short 6 month lifespan if you don't. Depending on OS it knows with a fresh install it is going on an SSD and sets itself but with win 7 anyway and a migrate it doesn't and will trash the drive.

We found this the hard way at work!

Click to expand...

Very good point.
Yes, defrag is off.
The software I used has an option to optimise for SSD, so all good.

Agree with the speed increase on laptops. I have installed Samsung 850 Pro SSD 512GB drives in my old Dell Studio and a newer Dell Inspiration 1GB, plus a Samsung 850 Pro 512GB in my son's Lenovo Laptop. Speed difference on boot is superb. About 15s to boot.

Also took the existing SSD 256GB SSD drive from the Dell Inspiron and installed that as the boot drive in my desk top.

All quite easy using Samsung free software. Probably the most cost effective performance upgrade available.

Grey Beard