installing SSD into g73jh-a2

After the HDD stupidity i had to fix last week, I found an SSD on clearance at best buy for 30% off. It's a intel x-25m 80g. I'm looking to install windows on it, but i've hit a complication.

I currently have the two seagate momentus 500g's in the laptop and everything runs perfect. My games are installed on the secondary drive, and all my extra stuff is on a portable HDD, so the only thing on the primary drive is windows stuff, which is about 60g. I wanted to clone the C drive to the SSD, so i swapped out my secondary drive w/ the SSD and formatted it, but the intel disk cloning software still claims there is not enough space. I figure the 20g recovery partition is whats clogging up the rest of the space.

I want to leave the current primary drive fully intact with the recovery partition included, in case something horrible happens i have a backup. I also want to make the computer as close to its current state as possible, since its not GSODing, and the keyboard and trackpad is running fine. Is there any way i can just clone the C drive partition to the SSD? Or can i copy the recovery partition to one of my other drives temporarily? If i re-burn the five CD recovery disks, would they restore a recovery partition?

Worst-case scenario, if i just installed the formatted SSD and my secondary drive into the system, could i install windows onto the SSD and use the windows restore backups on the secondary drive to return the drivers back, or would i have to fresh install everything?

 

First off, you want to leave some space on a SSD, so you don't want to fill it up completely. What you could do is make an image of your secondary HDD to an external drive. Then clone your primary to the secondary. This will copy your OS and Restoration Partition over to it. Delete the OS partition on the secondary. Restore the image of the secondary to the empty space from the external HDD to the secondary. Then just image the OS partition to the SSD.

In this setup, if you ever want to restore, you should be able to go into the BIOS and change the bootable HDD to the secondary. Then restart, and hit F9, and it should find the recovery partition. At least in theory, as I never had to do this.

Or, you can image the restore partition to an external hdd.

Or, give up on it and just do fresh installs, and once everything is updated and working, image that to an external HDD and use that image for restoring. Assuming you don't care about the included software.

 

I would recomand what chastity said in the last line, do a clean install, all the problem of the g73jh are solved, you should not fear them anymore, and a clean os is always better anyway

 

I will add a 3rd vote for clean install
Problems With Cloning SSD Drives | eHow.com
IMO the only use the recovery partition provides is a good way to easily setup your machine for sale.

 

I went through the same thing a few weeks back, only I bought the 120GB version of Intel SSD 320. I just used the included software to clone the drive without any problem, although it did take fooooorever. Your C drive should be smaller than the 60GB it's taking up right now. I am looking at my C drive, outside of games, my system only takes up about 35GB. Try to delete/uninstall some of the programs you don't need (or install them on secondary HD if possible) and move your User files onto the secondary HD, e.g., your Music, Pictures, Videos folders, they are ususally biggies.

Also, if you don't know this already, you current D: drive partition is also on the primary HD and you will need to get rid of whatever files on that drive.

 

yep, i used that partition for music and backed it up already, its completely barren. I believe i'll just go with the smart peoples advice and clean install. Thanks for the advice.

 

Whatever you do, I recommend not using the intel RST drivers as it jumps from sata 3bs to 6gbs. I found using the microsoft supplied ahci keeps my ssd at 6gbs.

 

I have a question about SSD's. Its on loading. Will a game load faster if I have 250 read speed and 150 write speed or will it load faster the other way around (250 write, 150 read)?

 

Loading is reading, ergo read speed