[kitsantiago]

Hi All,

I'm planning to get a new SSD drive for my birthday. I have a HP DV8T with dual bay drive. I upgraded it to 8GB Memory and a 1TB HHD(500GB x2 2.5). I'm thinking of replacing the boot drive to an SSD drive to run faster. I run Win 7 64 bit.

Please help. what do i need to consider, what do i need to remember in replacing and using new boot drive, how to install. everything i needed to make it painless. we all know that PC(Windows) are pretty good in making thing difficult.

Also, for the ultimate tech savvy guys out there. how can i upgrade my laptop to it's full potential or did i already did it?

[LiveBrianD]

First, make the recovery discs for the laptop if you haven't already.

I'm assuming you want to boot from the SSD and have one of the existing hard drives for data storage, right?

Second, are the two hard drives simply separate, or are they in RAID? (RAID 0 means you get the storage of both and better performance, but reduced reliability. RAID 1 means you get the storage of one, but you get redundancy.) If they're in RAID, you'll have to reinstall Windows. If they're not... you can put in the SSD and use software like easeus partition master to clone the boot hard drive to it.
My suggestion:
Remove the secondary hard drive and put in an SSD (boot from the first hard drive). Clone the OS to the SSD (keep in mind that the OS must NOT be bigger than the ssd. You may need to use a partition tool like the easeus one I mentioned so that the OS partition is not bigger than the SSD before cloning. Then, remove the first hard drive and put it in the closet, just in case. Put the SSD in the main bay and the other hard drive in the secondary one. Boot from the SSD. Or, if you want, you can reinstall Windows on the SSD instead of cloning (just make sure there isn't another drive with Windows already on it at the moment).

[orlbuckeye]

I added a 120GB SSD drive when I purchased my laptop. I purchased a Kingston laptop kit that camw with the drive and a USB Drive case and Acronis True Image software. I recently saw a deal on a 240 GB SSD at Newegg (OCZ Agility) for a good proce so I ordered it. I got the drive and put it in the external case and rebooted with the acronis DVD in the drive. I booted into Acronis and it took about a hour. When it was completed i removed the 120GB and connected the 240GB and it booted fine.

[alishathomaz]

Its a good SSD, Unlike traditional hard disk drives, SSDs have no moving parts, resulting in a quiet, cool, highly reliable storage solution that also offers faster application loading and system responsiveness.
It is specifically designed for notebook computers