SSD worth it?

Not because of eBay, but because I use Paypal exclusively for online purchases.
Amazon does not accept paypal.
I will not give out my credit card number.

I will buy from Newegg for exactly the same reason..... paypal.

OK, bullet bitten. 1 TB Mushkin SSD and 3.5" bay adapter will be here Thursday.

wreckwriter said:

OK, bullet bitten. 1 TB Mushkin SSD and 3.5" bay adapter will be here Thursday.

Good deal. A full report of your impressions would be appreciated - once you bounced it around a bit.

whs said:

Good deal. A full report of your impressions would be appreciated - once you bounced it around a bit.

No worries. studying best/easiest migration solutions now. Also replacing a small older hd with a new 1 TB model, second identical old one will be removed to make room for the ssd.

OK, parts will be here tomorrow. Doing my backups now. Question: Obviously migrating the OS to the SSD, what about the system reserved and recovery partitions? Do they go too?

I plan to use "Mini Tool Partition Wizard Pro" to do this, it has a wizard that will supposedly do it all at once. Space on the SSD is plenty to handle the entire contents of the current HDD so figured on moving everything then going back and moving a lot of data (user folder stuff) back onto the other drive afterwards.

Final thoughts and ideas welcome before Thursday evening!

The system reserved has to go also - else you cannot boot. You can however copy the bootmgr to the C partition. Then you don't need the system reserved.

Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Help Forums

For the migration I have made this little tutorial. IMPORTANT - since you will not use the OS installer, you will have to align the SSD (second link).

SSD - Install and Transfer the Operating System - Windows 7 Help Forums

SSD Alignment - Windows 7 Help Forums

wreckwriter said:

OK, parts will be here tomorrow. Doing my backups now. Question: Obviously migrating the OS to the SSD, what about the system reserved and recovery partitions? Do they go too?

I plan to use "Mini Tool Partition Wizard Pro" to do this, it has a wizard that will supposedly do it all at once. Space on the SSD is plenty to handle the entire contents of the current HDD so figured on moving everything then going back and moving a lot of data (user folder stuff) back onto the other drive afterwards.

Final thoughts and ideas welcome before Thursday evening!

Don't see why you need to change anything, meaning your partitions. Unless you need hard drive space. Here is what a member here who is VERY good at this. Topgundcp wrote this to another user today.

Here's an easy way to do it, With your SSD connected.

1. If not already done. Create a backup image of your current Windows HD. From Macrium, click on "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows"
   NOTE: you could actually clone the disk, but create a backup then restore will allow Macrium to correctly align the cluster size and perform trimming on the new SSD.
2. After step 1 is done, click on Restore tab, select the image from step 1 then click on Select different target disk, select the SSD as destination disk then click on Next->Finish. No need to use/boot from Rescue disk. It will be faster and Macrium will also perform trimming on the new SSD.
3. Disconnect the HD and reboot. Windows should boot up with the new SSD.

All you need is Macrium Reflect......nothing else.... Mike.

Yes their well worth it.
my 7 year old laptop got a great boost from fitting one, gave it a new lease of life.
Even my new pc has been made even better adding one

OldMike65 said:

Don't see why you need to change anything, meaning your partitions. Unless you need hard drive space. Here is what a member here who is VERY good at this. Topgundcp wrote this to another user today.

Here's an easy way to do it, With your SSD connected.

1. If not already done. Create a backup image of your current Windows HD. From Macrium, click on "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows"
   NOTE: you could actually clone the disk, but create a backup then restore will allow Macrium to correctly align the cluster size and perform trimming on the new SSD.
2. After step 1 is done, click on Restore tab, select the image from step 1 then click on Select different target disk, select the SSD as destination disk then click on Next->Finish. No need to use/boot from Rescue disk. It will be faster and Macrium will also perform trimming on the new SSD.
3. Disconnect the HD and reboot. Windows should boot up with the new SSD.

All you need is Macrium Reflect......nothing else.... Mike.

Perfect. Thanks Mike!