I have a new laptop on the way. It has a normal SATA hard drive from the factory.

I want to swap it out for an SSD from day one - as from the sounds of things thats the best way to do it.

At the moment I am looking at the Samsung 128GB 830 model in the form of the "notebook kit". About £130.

Can anyone advise if this is a good drive. I have looked on google etc and it seems its not the fastest but it seems there are a lot of problems with the Intel and OCZ drives due to the CPU in the drive.. where as the samsung seems to get no real issues as they dont use the Sandforce chip but their own.

Anyone confirm this?

Also, I assume to format the disk I just remove the standard HDD. Install the ned SSD and then use the recovery CD to reinstall everything? I checked and the laptop does come with the actual win 7 disc.

Or, is it better to use the S/W that comes with the kit as there might be driver issues etc?

I have never done an SSD swap before so I dont want to **** it up!

 

I would look at the M4's as well. Depending on the make you may have to create the recovery disk using the manufactors tools

 

Crucial M4 128gb drive in my laptop and it flies, no issues in 6 months or so now.

 

i have just fitted an OCZ Vertex 3 into my laptop. As it was a year old i used some software called 'EZGIG 2' (and a 'caddy') to clone my original drive.
there are lots of videos on YouTube to help if u get stuck....

p.s. - you will need some jewellers/precision screwdrivers .......

 

Cheers. Ordered the 830 drive, will check out you tube
Will prob do all the updates etc then ghost it but will do some reading first.

 

I put 128GB samsung SSD in my laptop. Works great!! i made recovery discs and installed/formatted using them.

 

I put a 256gb M4 in my laptop, cost half what Sony wanted to put a 256gb SSD in from the factory plus I got to choose make.

I simply copied the existing HDD to an image on an external USB drive, then swapped the SSD in and restored from the image. Clonezilla, Acronis etc will do this and then it is exactly as it would have arrived from the factory......