Asus N56VZ + SSD + WIN8 (clean) = HOW TO?

Hello everyone, kind of new here and looking for assistance from experienced ones.

I'm not novice, I know how to put everything in to parts and back from when I was 12 (so thats more then 10 years exp), but never encountered Laptop win WIN8 pre-installed.

I have Asus N56VZ (i7/16/750/2/W8H) and after few days of working with it I got an idea to speed it up even more with an SSD (250GB), because I had one on old pc (L502x) and it was my best experience with laptop.

For the last week I have spent all my free time online on reading everything about my laptop and replacement hard drives. In conlusion, at this stage, I'm sooo lost that I dont even know where to refer to (clean/upgrade, slic, uefi, secure boot...). I found multiple websites with different advices: WIN7 + Upgrade to 8, WIN8H upgrade to WIN8P and etc, but I did not found specific example, with even possible guidance on HOW TO from STEP1 to STEP2 what to do when replacing HDD with SSD and installing completely fresh copy of WIN8H on N56VZ.

Can anyone share their own experience? Or maybe some weblinks? Again, I have plenty of "gerenal" weblinks on "how to install SSD" or "How to install WIN8 on Laptop X", but not my specific build.

And how about SSD performance: is there a huge difference between Samsung 250GB SSD840 PRO vs Samsung 250GB SSD840 NON PRO? Because price difference is about +30-40%.

And of course, in the first place - thank you for reading this :thumbsup:

 

A lot of people like to clone their drive for convenience sake, but it's generally advised instead that you perform a fresh install. There's no trick to installing Windows 8, really: you just need installation media. With that, the Windows installer will reference the key embedded in the BIOS and take it from there. If you don't have Windows 8 installation media, you should be able to get a .iso and burn it to a disc or extract the contents to a USB key and use the Windows 7 USB tool to create the installation media.

Not a huge difference, no. Huge difference when comparing a platter drive, but the read/write speeds between the two Samsungs and other competitors is fairly comparable.

 

Thanks for response!

Ok, so would it be correct to think, that if I replace hdd with ssd and I want clean WIN8, I have to:

1. get original DVD or .iso of DVD - WIN 8 Home (as my computer license on sticker in the bottom is home, or can I deploy professional?)
2. Create USB with WIN7USB tool
3. Disable UEFI or secure boot (in order to get option for boot device)
4. and install the same way as it would be normal Windows setup, just key will be picked up by setup itself?

 

Yep! You don't need to disable UEFI (in fact, don't disable it unless you need legacy BIOS/CSM for something specific). Just disable Secure Boot to boot from the USB drive.

For info on Windows 8 Deployment, see this guide.