I wish I had not waited so long - upgrading to SSD was ridiculously easier than I thought!

gryphon1911

Hall of Famer
Location
Central Ohio, USA
Name
Andrew
My photo computer is pretty well speced.
  • 32GB RAM
  • i7 -8700 @ 3.2Ghz
  • NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
  • 1TB HDD - 7200 RPM (Main drive)
  • 2TB HDD - 7200 RPM (Image Archive drive)
  • Internal SD Card Reader
  • Running Windows 10
An older system, but still plenty capable.
The one lagging item in the package is the internal HDD. I thought about it for a while upgrading to an SSD.

I waited for a few reasons.
Unsure if the tech was mature enough yet, a reliable company that I trusted to come out with a good unit, size (1TB was the floor), and my capability of actually doing the swap.

I was talking with some friends and they all mentioned how easy it was to switch over from their older spinning platter drives to the SSD.
So, I go back into research mode after abandoning the idea a few years ago. I'm glad I did as the process was much easier than I had expected it to be.

Here is my process:
  1. Purchased a Samsung 1TB 870 QVO SSD Drive ($99)
  2. Purchase a USB to SATA transfer cable - Sabrent ($6.99)
  3. Purchase a 2.5" to 3.5" drive bay converter - Sabrent ($7.99)
  4. Download and Install Macrium Reflect 7 - (Free)
  5. mount the SSD to the converter bay plate
  6. Plug the drive into the USB cable and plug into USB 3.0 port
  7. Fire up Macrium Reflect
  8. Click Clone this Drive on the main drive (selecting all partitions)
  9. Click the destination drive (the new SSD)
  10. Click Start
  11. Go out into the living room and Play Call of Duty on XBOX One with my wife for 30 minutes
  12. Check on progress - drive clone process at 57%
  13. Go back out to living room and play some retro games on Pandora's Toybox emulator machine (played some Samurai Showdown and Robo Army on the Mame/Neo Geo emu).
  14. Check back in another 30 minutes - Clone process is complete.
  15. Verified that the drive was copied correctly.
  16. Shut down PC
  17. Extracted the old hard drive
  18. Installed SSD in it's place
  19. restarted PC
  20. Done!
  21. Enjoying the new speed enhancements from the SSD drive.
Total cost of project:
  • $113.98 in materials
  • 1.5 hours in time spent from unboxing, to cloning to install of new drive (and playing games while I waited! :) )
I could kick myself for not doing this sooner. It was ridiculously easy.

My next project, when I decide to spend the money might be to replace the 2TB image archive drive with an SSD as well. I checked on 2TB($199) and 4TB($449) prices and I'm thinking the time might be soon!
 
Upgrading to SSD from HDD is like getting a new computer. I'd never go with an HDD again, except my external 6TB storage drive (7200rpm), at least until prices drop a bit. I've upgraded 3 laptops from HDD to SSD and it real is pretty simple if you can read directions and follow them.
 
@gryphon1911:
Thanks very much for the description of the steps you took to do the upgrade.
I'm on the same path, with the same considerations 😀, as you. Although I'm a bit behind you.
But reading your story gives me enough confidence to do the same.
Thanks.
René.


I thought it might be helpful for some, because I had to piece together information from various different websites and from talking to various different people on the best way to make this happen.

If I can make just one persons life easier through this process by publishing out the steps, then it was worth it.
 
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I love SSD, I love RAID 0 dual SSD drives even more! In fact I'm running Mac OS totally unsupported having to use the cloning HD method just to keep using it! For Photoshop my old 2012 Mac Mini is still quite capable because of the RAID 0 configuration.
 
Upgrading to a SSD on a Mac is so easy. Make a Time Machine backup of your current drive. Replace your old HDD with the new drive. Boot up the new drive. Format then use the Time machine backup. Mac's are so easy.
 
I run a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO SSD for my C drive and a 1TB Samsung 850 SSD for my D drive.
I can still remember the enormous impact my first (128GB!) SSD had on boot, load and read/write times. I had that SSD go bad because of buggy firmware but managed to get everything off it before it completely failed. A reformat and firmware update has that SSD working perfectly again. I think it's now the portable drive I use for misc. backups and downloads from other machines.
 
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