Upgrading laptop to SSD?

[satanicguardian]

Hi guys,

I currently have an Asus X552C laptop, windows 8.1, i5 3337u, 6GB DDR3, 750GB HDD with I think some kind of onboard low storage ssd that allows quick resume from sleep and a GeForce 710M

It's a decent laptop, slim, lightweight and normally quick - but I've noticed recently that hard Drive spends all it's time thrashing at 100%, i'd researched this before and it's normally 1 of 3 things (or a combination of all) superfetch, defender or search indexer (common w8.1 problems apparently) but sometimes it will totally freeze out, mouse and all and take a few minutes to come back, this is with minimal CPU and RAM usage and just the HDD thrashing, I've done a PC refresh on the windows 8 settings menu hoping it would help, it does seem a little quicker but I still get the same sluggish hdd 100% issue.

I was wondering if this is going to be a genuine fault with the HDD or whether I'm just so used to having a SSD (on my gaming rig) that it just feels slow.

I need to ascertain if it's worthwhile taking the laptop back to the original store (i'd normally buy from OCUK but it was a purchase on a whim due to price reduction) or whether i should splash out and put a shiny 250-500GB ssd in it, my problems are:

• Can I reinstall/xfer my current windows 8 version to this new ssd smoothly?
• Is it worth doing to this machine (it was about £500 and it's 6 months old)
• Would I have to fiddle around with the on board SSD (that I suspect is there)
• Are there any other easier alternatives that people have come across to avoid this hard drive thrashing?

Would be much appreciated if you guys could advise/offer opinions!

Thanks,

Jamie

 

[wazza300]

its probably the hdd being slow,thats the trouble with having the os on them

you need an ssd for os imo and keep the hdd for storage

if the data/os will fit onto an ssd then you can clone it across with macrium reflect,idk if you have a dvd drive but you can also pull that out and replace it with an ssd so you can keep the hdd in there aswell

you probably need a 7mm thick ssd for a laptop so make sure before you buy

 

[satanicguardian]

Hmm, well there's only space for one HDD so I'd need to replace it, Idk if a 250gb would be enough, 500gb is preferable but they are so expensive

Can you recommend a decent 7mm SSD?

 

[Macky]

Pretty much have all the same issues as you with my laptop, lenovo u410. Similar spec 500gb HDD with 30gb msata ssd that I managed to break the rapid resume thing somehow. It can be rather slow at times and I dont really know why. I think I am going to buy a 120gb ssd at some point to put os and apps on and then maybe 4gb more ram. Going to wait untik the warranty has ran out first. Also tempted to stick windows 7 on as windows 8.1 seems slower and a bit slower to navigate for me.

I'm guessing your 30gb ssd will be an msata in which case you're best option would be to get a 120/250gb msata ssd and stick os/apps on it and everything else on the mechanical one. The windows 8 key should be embedded into your BIOS so if you search around, try these forums for the windows 8 iso it should all work fine.