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Upgrading laptop with SSD

B

bipin.nag

Junior Member
Hi, I am looking to upgrade my laptop (lenovo Y500) with an SSD. It has a 1 TB hdd and has an empty ultrabay slot. Lately it has gotten very sluggish, slow startup, Windows 8 crawls.

I want forum members opinions on what is my best option for SSD as of now. Stuff I am looking for in order:

Size: Best speedup/gain for less(er) storage. 128 GB should be enough for Windows 8 😕?
Durability/Reliability: What are the trusted brands I should go for (experiences based on SSD longevity would help a lot). Sub question: how much of factor is warranty? what should be avoided ?
Performance/price: Price is pretty much restricted by size, unless some brand undercuts lucratively. I can find a lot of mumbo jumbo on net, what to look for here.

So is there a clear winner? Would love to know from you guys.
 
I upgraded my LenovoT510 over a year ago with a Samsung 830 (256GB) replacing a HDD. I put the new Sammy in the main OS drive slot and moved the HDD to Ultrabay. I booted to Acronis TI on a thumb drive and cloned the HDD to the SSD. I removed the HDD from Ultrabay and put it away. Rebooted and it was perfect running on the SSD.
 
I'm in a similar boat. I am expecting a crucial c500 240Gb today to replace a 160gb drive in my T400. I have linux mint and Windows 7 on the drive. would Acronis T1 handle 2 operating systems and their partitions and boot manager?

thanks!
 
bipin.nag said:
Size: Best speedup/gain for less(er) storage. 128 GB should be enough for Windows 8 😕?
Durability/Reliability: What are the trusted brands I should go for (experiences based on SSD longevity would help a lot). Sub question: how much of factor is warranty? what should be avoided ?
Performance/price: Price is pretty much restricted by size, unless some brand undercuts lucratively. I can find a lot of mumbo jumbo on net, what to look for here.

So is there a clear winner? Would love to know from you guys.
Click to expand...

You will take a write performance hit with a 128GB vs a 256GB SSD, I found out the hard way when I installed a Crucial M500 128 in my daughter's laptop. I ran some benchmarks and thought something was wrong... but it's just that write speeds for that drive, in that capacity, are not that good. Write speed will still be better than the laptop's HDD, so if you don't need uber performance, you can save a little money with a 128GB. Personally, with 256GB SSDs under $100, I don't see any reason to go less than that, unless there is a hard cost consideration or the purpose just doesn't need it. Also, be mindful that you need to leave about 25% of the SSD's capacity empty so it can run efficiently... don't buy a 128GB and expect to load it to 110GB's and have it run well.

Pure price vs performance right now favors the Crucial MX100, but there are some nipping at it's heels... the Samsung EVO and SanDisk come to mind, as well as Intel. You do not need a PRO drive unless you just want a better warranty.

As far as warranty, get what you are comfortable with. SSD's have proven their durability, although any product will have failures. IMHO, a 3-year warranty is fine, 5-year better, but not necessary.
 
I just used the key that came with my laptop and did a clean install of windows instead of cloning it. Then I decided that I wanted to try windows 8 so I did another clean install of it. It's up to you but if you have proprietary software that came with the laptop be sure to get a copy of it from your manufacturer before you do it. I got everything I needed from dell and had it before hand to make things easier.
 
Puffnstuff said:
I just used the key that came with my laptop and did a clean install of windows instead of cloning it. Then I decided that I wanted to try windows 8 so I did another clean install of it. It's up to you but if you have proprietary software that came with the laptop be sure to get a copy of it from your manufacturer before you do it. I got everything I needed from dell and had it before hand to make things easier.
Click to expand...

I just used the recovery discs when I installed my PNY Optima. With the SSD, uninstalling bloatware went quick, and necessary drivers are usually installed. The only issue I had was rebuilding the MBR to actually get my PC to boot from the SSD, but this probably varies from laptop to laptop.
 
My cost on the Crucial m500 240gb is very similar to that of most of the "other" vendors' 120/128gb SSDs. Its plenty fast SSD-wise, and comes in the 7mm form factor with a spacer provided. Pretty much a no-brainer.

SSDs have gone through a few generations now. There really aren't any 'bad' ones on the market today, although Samsung and to a lesser extent, Intel, were the first to deliver extremely stable products that integrators could use with comfort in enterprise PC applications.
 
For the Lenovo Y500 and similar, this shouldn't be a major life-shattering decision. I think you can get 840-EVO 250GB drives for around $100+. For that laptop, there's not going to be a bottleneck with the controller as I knew from the beginning with my old Centrino-2-Duo lappie upgraded to an MX100 (overkill, too, but plenty of redeployment options.)

For stuff that I do on a laptop, I don't need 1TB of storage. So this is all about trade-offs between the various factors of use, need, want, cost, etc.
 
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