Why Upgrade?

  • Faster and Better Performance
    • Faster OS Bootup / Shutdown
    • Faster Opening of Application or File
    • Faster Multi-tasking
  • Less Power / Less Heat / Better Battery Life

Differences between HDD and SSD

Attribute SSD (Solid State Drive) HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
Power Draw / Battery Life Less power draw, averages 2 – 3 watts, resulting in 30+ minute battery boost More power draw, averages 6 – 7 watts and therefore uses more battery
Cost Expensive, in excess of $1.50 per gigabyte Only around $0.10 per gigabyte, very cheap
Capacity Typically not larger than 512GB for notebook size drives Typically 500GB – 2TB for notebook size drives
Bootup Time for Windows 7 Around 22 seconds average bootup time Around 40 seconds average bootup time
Noise There are no moving parts and as such no sound Audible clicks and spinning can be heard
Vibration No vibration as there are no moving parts The spinning of the platters can sometimes result in vibration
Heat Produced Lower power draw and no moving parts so little heat is produced HDD doesn’t produce much heat, but it will have a measurable amount more heat than an SSD due to moving parts and higher power draw
Failure Rate Mean time between failure rate of 2.0 million hours Mean time between failure rate of 1.5 million hours
File Copy / Write Speed Generally above 200 MB/s and up to 500 MB/s for cutting edge drives The range can be anywhere from 50 – 120MB / s
Encryption Full Disk Encryption (FDE)Supported on some models Full Disk Encryption (FDE) Supported on some models
File Opening Speed Up to 30% faster than HDD Slower than SSD
Magnetism Affected? An SSD is safe from any effects of magnetism Magnets can erase data

Common brands

Kingston, Crucial, Samsung, Intel, Toshiba, Corsair

How to Migrate from Harddisk to Solid State Disk?

  • Buy SSD and USB to SATA Interface
  • Get Cloning Software
  • Install/Run & Record
  • Start W7/W8 OS
  • Cleanup / Housekeep / Remove unused or old  program
  • Defrag Harddisk
  • Install Cloning Software
  • Perform Disk Clone
  • Swap Solid State Disk with Harddisk
  • Run & Record ATTO Disk Benchmark (Compare reading)
  • SSD Alignment – Run msinfo32. Select Components > Storage > Disks. Look for your SSD and find the “Partition Starting Offset”. If this number is divisible by 4096 (that is, if dividing it by 4096 reveals a whole number and not a decimal), your partition is correctly aligned. If not, head back into Gparted and try again—make sure there’s exactly 1MB of space before your partition, or it won’t work.
  • Trim –  At Command Prompt,  run
    • fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotifyPaging
    • fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotifyPaging 0
    • fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify
    • fsutil behavior set DisableNotify 0
  • Disabling the page file
    • Right click ‘My Computer’ and click ‘Properties’.
    • Go to the ‘Advanced System Settings’ tab.
    • Click Settings in the ‘Performance’ fieldset, then go to the Advanced tab.
    • Click Change in the ‘Virtual memory’ fieldset.
    • Click on your SSD drive, select ‘No paging file’ and click ‘Set’.
    • Click OK when you’re done.
  • Disable Hibernation
    • powercfg /hibernate off
    • Remove the hibernation file
  • Disable the SuperFetch service
  • Disable or remove defragment software
  • Disable Search Indexing
  • Disable Temporary Files, Cache and Logs