Planning on upgrading hard drive from HDD to SSHD, any tips?

ACMDogfight1997 · 07 Dec 2018

Ztruker said:

I have a 500Gb Samsung EVO 860 SSD for my boot drive. I picked it up on sale for $79 from Amazon, free shipping, 2 day delivery.

There is one on sale there now for $72: Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E500B/AM)

I think I've made my decision already. Probably better off getting an SSD than anything else considering the overwhelming advice pointing to that choice. Had just wish-listed that same particular drive on Newegg. Figured it's a good choice since it's got a decent price to storage ratio and it's on lists for best SSDs of 2018 for the SATA and budget categories. I'll be sure to pair this with my old disk drive so that way I can load things faster as well as add some storage to the system.

Don't know how much of a change it would've been if I picked an SSHD over an SSD but I guess it wouldn't hurt so thanks, I guess?

dalchina · 07 Dec 2018

Expect boot to lock screen in around 12-13s. However if you have a lot of startup progs, don't expect miracles after that.

And of course creating a disk image (over USB3 e.g.) is very much faster with a SSD- as is incremental disk imaging. E.g. Macrium Reflect (free).

Ztruker · 07 Dec 2018

Power on to Desktop on my Lenovo K450 is 17 seconds. Speed is addictive for sure.

ACMDogfight1997 · 26 Dec 2018

Update

I bought all my components about a week ago and they've just arrived. I installed them and now my system is utilizing them now! Everything is working, but the SSD is currently being unused. How do I make this work alongside my HDD. Everything is hooked up, and it shows on Disk Management.

Planning on upgrading hard drive from HDD to SSHD, any tips?-disk.png

Berton · 26 Dec 2018

The Unallocated part of Disk Management indicates the drive has not been Partitioned followed by Formatting. File Explorer [renamed from earlier Windows Explorer] will not see the drive until the process has been completed and a Drive Letter assigned.

But a question: Did/do you intend to use the SSD as your boot/system drive?

ACMDogfight1997 · 26 Dec 2018

Berton said:

The Unallocated part of Disk Management indicates the drive has not been Partitioned followed by Formatting. File Explorer [renamed from earlier Windows Explorer] will not see the drive until the process has been completed and a Drive Letter assigned.

But a question: Did/do you intend to use the SSD as your boot/system drive?

I was kind of following what this guy said:

NavyLCDR said:

You don't want to mix an SSD and HDD in a raid array. You want the SSD connected to a SATA port and the SATA controller to be in AHCI mode, not raid.

Ztruker · 26 Dec 2018

Previous discussion in this thread was assuming (I know, I know, bad word) you were going to use the SSD as your boot drive and the 7200RPM 1TB drive as a data drive. With that as the target, you would set SATA as AHCI, disconnect the 1TB 7200RPM drive leaving just the SSD. Then clean install Windows 10 to the SSD, do updates, install programs and reconnect the 1TB drive when done. Delete the Windows 10 installattion from the 1TB drive, freeing up that space and removing any future confusion.

Or ... make an image backup of the 1TB drive using Macrium Reflect Free then disconnect the 1TB drive, connect the SSD and restore the image to the SSD. This will work as long as there is not more data on the 1TB drive than will fit on the SSD. This method requires an external hard drive to put the backup image on, which you should already have and if not, should get. Imaging should be part of your normal process.

Or ... clone the 1TB drive to the SSD as long as there is not too much data to fit on the SSD.

ACMDogfight1997 · 26 Dec 2018

Ztruker said:

Previous discussion in this thread was assuming (I know, I know, bad word) you were going to use the SSD as your boot drive and the 7200RPM 1TB drive as a data drive. With that as the target, you would set SATA as AHCI, disconnect the 1TB 7200RPM drive leaving just the SSD. Then clean install Windows 10 to the SSD, do updates, install programs and reconnect the 1TB drive when done. Delete the Windows 10 installattion from the 1TB drive, freeing up that space and removing any future confusion.

Or ... make an image backup of the 1TB drive using Macrium Reflect Free then disconnect the 1TB drive, connect the SSD and restore the image to the SSD. This will work as long as there is not more data on the 1TB drive than will fit on the SSD. This method requires an external hard drive to put the backup image on, which you should already have and if not, should get. Imaging should be part of your normal process.

Or ... clone the 1TB drive to the SSD as long as there is not too much data to fit on the SSD.

Well, I'm trying your 3rd suggestion and confused as to why it's not working

Planning on upgrading hard drive from HDD to SSHD, any tips?-why.png

Planning on upgrading hard drive from HDD to SSHD, any tips?-why2.png

Clearly, I have enough space to clone it don't I? Unless it's talking about the entire partition's space (including free space).

dalchina · 26 Dec 2018

A clone is an exact copy. Clearly your C: alone as it stands is much bigger than your SSD, hence the message. So you'd have to shrink C: first to make an exact copy.

Ztruker suggested

Or ... make an image backup of the 1TB drive using Macrium Reflect Free then disconnect the 1TB drive, connect the SSD and restore the image to the SSD. This will work as long as there is not more data on the 1TB drive than will fit on the SSD. This method requires an external hard drive to put the backup image on, which you should already have and if not, should get. Imaging should be part of your normal process.

Note you may also wish to consider converting MBR to GPT,
Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk in Windows 10 | Tutorials

and of course using AHCI protocol with your SSD for better performance.
Enable AHCI in Windows 8 and Windows 10 after Installation | Tutorials

ACMDogfight1997 · 26 Dec 2018

dalchina said:

A clone is an exact copy. Clearly your C: alone as it stands is much bigger than your SSD, hence the message. So you'd have to shrink C: first to make an exact copy.

Ztruker suggested

Note you may also wish to consider converting MBR to GPT,
Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk in Windows 10 | Tutorials

and of course using AHCI protocol with your SSD for better performance.
Enable AHCI in Windows 8 and Windows 10 after Installation | Tutorials

Won't let me shrink C: more than 50 GB for some reason.