pgradig Hard Drive to Solid State, What is the Benefit?

Category: Geeks r Us

Post 1 by hardyboy09 (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2014 9:42:59

Hi, all.

To go along with Windows 8, I was thinking about upgrading my hard drive with a solid state one. My question is do you know if there is a way to make an image of Windows 7 and all previous information including drivers, then purchase the upgrade to Windows 8.1? How much faster will a solid state drive be than a regular one?
Thanks.

Post 2 by Shepherdwolf (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2014 9:49:26

Someone else correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, but this is what I know:
A solid-state hard drive is usually much smaller than a typical one because of how memory is stored. It allows near instantaneous reference to files contained therein, however, and many laptops especially have a small solid-state drive for the OS and such.

If you want to try and run two different versions of Windows on the same machine, you'll have to know about virtualization. I don't know a ton about this, but I'm 95% sure you can do it with different versions of the same OS, such as Windows.

A solid-state drive will wake your computer up almost instantly if it's been in hibernate or sleep mode, and it tends to make the starting of the OS a good deal faster (in the neighbourhood of eight to fourteen seconds if your OS is stored on the solid-state drive, which it probably would be).

My opinion is this: if you're going to pay way more for a solid state, don't worry about it. However, if you can get one for the same price, or a hybrid hard-drie with a small solid-state partition, you could do far worse than consider it.

Post 3 by hardyboy09 (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2014 13:17:36

I was thinking of maybe a 128 GB? Is their a way I can transfer my Win 7 installation, that way all my drivers are intact, then upgrade to Win 8.1?
Thanks.

Post 4 by forereel (Just posting.) on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2014 15:38:30

You'd need a kit to do that, but it can be done.
If I had all my data, cocuments and such backed up, I'd not worry about it much.
When you install Windows 8.1 it gets all the drivers for you.
Benefits are some speed, weight savings, heating of the machine. That is about it. Cool as well. Smile.
I've never swapped drives alone, so can't say if I could.
If you've never swapped a drive, I'd advise having some help on hand, or just paying it done.

Post 5 by hardyboy09 (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2014 23:06:56

I can get some help. Thanks for the advice.