Almost out of space on my 60Gb Corsair SSD and want to upgrade to 240Gb+. Running W7 Pro 64bit and Asus P7P55D-E. Already use another 1Tb HDD (partitioned) for data etc, and will keep that as is.

I assume the mobo will restrict what I can upgrade to, eg newer SSD read/write speeds will be much quicker than the board will allow?

Am I right in thinking the mobo only allows for 1 x SATA 3 drive, therefore I can’t clone? Would I have to get an external caddy or something else?

Any SSDs you can recommend? Have heard that some recommend turning off indexing to improve reliability, which I cannot do as I use search several times each day.

Ta v much

Looking at your motherboard spec sheet:

– 6 xSATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
– 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (gray)

So you should be able to plug in the new SSD, clone the old to the new and then switch to booting from the new drive. Bear in mind that for the clone, you don’t HAVE to have both drives on SATA 6.0 Gb ports.

There shouldn’t be a problem cloning the small to the large drive – Intel and Samsung both provide utilities you can use (if you buy a new Intel or Samsung drive) to do the cloning for free.

In terms of decent SSDs – Samsung 850 pro, 840 pro, 840 Evo are the best (in descending order of performance). Intel SSD 530s are OK too. Don’t buy OCZ (now Toshiba), Crucial, Kingston, Plextor drives – various issues with the different companies.

Indexing-wise, Tom’s Hardware has a brief discussion here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/294861-32-ssds-indexing
In summary – turn off indexing on the SSD, it’s fast enough that you don’t need it. Leave it turned on on the 1Tb HDD, job’s a good’un 🙂

I just bought the Samsun Evo 840, which seems to be most people’s top pick of performance for price (you can get slightly better by paying double)

£85 on amazon for 250GB. comes with fairly idiot proof migration software.

I bought a cheapy external caddy. Bit annoying for a one-use thing, but it’ll probably come in handy again. Someone suggested I buy one from maplin, then take it back when I’ve used it. Bit cheeky!

Can’t see there being a problem with transfer, it just means the clone will only be reading at SATA 2 speeds, once you change them over the new drive will run at SATA 3 as it should.

Cool.

Was looking at the £85 Evo 840 on Amazon this morning. They only have the basic version which I gather ships without the cable kit. Guess their “recommended” cable and 2.5″ to 3.5″ converter cradle will do the trick.

Cheers chaps

Hold on!

The cable/cradle thing is for installing into desktop PCs, which tend to have slots for 3.5″ drives, and need a cable to connect.

No or cradles needed for laptop, as it slots straight in to the MB and will be the be the same size as what’s in there.

You do need an external caddy (or just an adapter, without the enclosure), which should come with a cable. You can always format the old SSD, and put it in the caddy afterwards to use as another external drive.

For the cloning, you install the software, put the new SSD in the caddy, connect to the laptop by the cable, press “go” on the migration software, wait for it to complete, swap the drives over in the laptop, job’s a good’un. Turn on and go.

The SSD is for my PC. The current SSD has a cradle for the 3.5″ bay so I figured the same set up would be needed for the new one. I guess for temporary, i.e cloning, it wouldn’t strictly be necessary, but for a fiver it’s worth having one anyway.