- Location
- Central Ohio, USA
- Name
- Andrew
My photo computer is pretty well speced.
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:
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!
- 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
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:
- Purchased a Samsung 1TB 870 QVO SSD Drive ($99)
- Purchase a USB to SATA transfer cable - Sabrent ($6.99)
- Purchase a 2.5" to 3.5" drive bay converter - Sabrent ($7.99)
- Download and Install Macrium Reflect 7 - (Free)
- mount the SSD to the converter bay plate
- Plug the drive into the USB cable and plug into USB 3.0 port
- Fire up Macrium Reflect
- Click Clone this Drive on the main drive (selecting all partitions)
- Click the destination drive (the new SSD)
- Click Start
- Go out into the living room and Play Call of Duty on XBOX One with my wife for 30 minutes
- Check on progress - drive clone process at 57%
- 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).
- Check back in another 30 minutes - Clone process is complete.
- Verified that the drive was copied correctly.
- Shut down PC
- Extracted the old hard drive
- Installed SSD in it's place
- restarted PC
- Done!
- Enjoying the new speed enhancements from the SSD drive.
- $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! )
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!