Blond needs Expert advice on RAM & SSD upgrade!! x

Hi forum.. I’m lucy x new here :hi2:

I was hoping to get some advice from an expert regarding my new purchase, :thumbsup:

Acer Aspire R7 Review - Windows Convertible Tablets and Notebook Reviews by MobileTechReview

It’s a freaky looking laptop / tablet and perfect design for my personal needs. I’m in love with the design and can’t wait to get it.

My background is fashion and not laptops that why I’m here to learn, I have decided to upgrade the system,

I’m going to purchase the 8gb ram stick below, I was hoping someone could tell me if upgrading the ram would be something I could do personally, I would remove the 2gb stick and it would give me a free slot for the 8gb, I have never opened a laptop before or did anything like it but I did check YouTube and there is a billion videos showing how to upgrade ram which look simple enough,:thumbsup:

in the mobile tech review link above it shows the insides of the laptop, can someone with experience tell me if the ram is easy to get to, also regarding the setup would I need to go into BIOS to update ram or will this be automatic, not that I know how to do that but just read some place it needs to be done sometimes, I was hoping the machine would pick it up itself.

HyperX Genesis 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 PC3-12800 Non-ECC CL9 SODIMM Notebook Dual Channel Memory, this is the model I’m going for,, from my research it’s what is required, I just don’t understand if the dual channel part & non ECC matters at all, do they effect the ram being accepted by the laptop, only thing I’m worried about is it being excepted cause of brand and as I know spec is right,

Amazon.com : HyperX Genesis 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 PC3-12800 Non-ECC CL9 SODIMM Notebook Dual Channel Memory KHX1600C9S3K2/8GX : Computer Memory : Electronics

The ram part I’m sure I can do if some guidance from some nice people here.
The next part is where it gets complicated and it’s out of my league,
I would like to upgrade the normal hard drive to a 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 256 GB SATA 6GB/s Solid State Drive.

The machine already comes with a 24gb msata caching SSD,
it’s just for caching, so I wanted to know if by taking out the main 500gb hard drive I can have the 256gb ssd or is that not possible having the SSd with the 24gb caching SSD.

256 gb SSD is more than enough space for me as I put most stuff on dropbox and cloud so no need for big harddrive.

I would get an expert to do this part problem is being out in Dubai I can’t trust anyone to do it out of my sight from bad experiences before, so I’m having come to my house to do the upgrades so nothing can go missing or get changed,

From what I understand a recovery cd needs to be made from current setup as it’s a win 8 system,
I have a new win 8 boxed so would go for a clean install but since with win8 you can only install over another version win 8 a recovery disk is still needed?!! ( researched but not no personal experience)
Or do the below,
i wanted to know which is better what the guy advised below or go with the USB option below, i do have other laptops with USB 3 ports if that makes any difference.

‘ Before swapping drives, make an OS recovery drive - you'll need a usb drive with at least 16gb of storage. I used a sata to usb adapter and an old sata drive. Then install easeus todo backup, a free drive cloning utility. Clone the drive over to the ssd (for example by using a usb to sata adapter). Then swap the drives.’

I wanted to know if the IT guys here can mess up my system or damage it doing this and is it worth the performance gain to put in the Samsung SSD considering there is 24gb of caching SSD.

I would keep the machine for 3 years if I have upgrade to SSD if not then I would sell it 15 months and get the same model with the update spec.

can someone let me know which option is better, only upgrade the ram or do the SSD and keep the machine for a longer time. i just want a really fast machine as i will be using the tablet on the go from place to place just normal tasks no games or anything but i got an SSD laptop and im scared of losing the speed i have now.

I only paid 750$ for the machine brand new so saved about 250$ already.

If some that understand these issue can help me out I would really appreciate your advice.
sorry to go on, really had to get it off my chest and hope someone can guide me.

if anybody has the R7 and plans to do these upgrades please stick them on youtube!! i would pay someone to make a video making these changes so i could do it myself!! Pm if your interested.

thank

lucy

 

I'll answer what I can in sections, and note where others should probably answer. I haven't personally used that model of laptop; it is quite an unusual (but also unique!) design.

Going by what's written in that review, it would be a bit of a pain, though you could do it yourself. The main reason it would be a pain is that there are 13 Torx screws. If you don't already have Torx screwdrivers, you can probably find them at a local hardware store (hopefully even in Dubai). I use jewelers' screwdrivers for my laptop as they cover the right sizes, but a lot of sets don't include Torx, so be sure to get one that does. The double-sided adhesive tape could also be a bit challenging, though I'm not familiar with that as most laptops don't have that. But once you actually get the screws unscrewed and the tape unstuck, actually swapping out the RAM should be easy, and then it's just putting the tape and screws back. As long as the laptop is off and there isn't lots of static electricity, everything should be fine.

The BIOS will automatically detect the additional RAM. It shouldn't be necessary to update the BIOS first, since this is a pretty new laptop, although it couldn't hurt.

The non-ECC part is important, as ECC memory usually only works in servers (it would be quite unusual to see it available for a laptop). The "dual" part is important here in that this Amazon listing is for two sticks of 4 GB of RAM apiece. What you really need is one stick of RAM, as your laptop only has one upgradeable RAM slot. So I'd go for something like this instead, where you get 8 GB of RAM in one stick instead of two. That would give you 12 GB overall (the laptop has 4 GB built-in that cannot be upgraded), so you could also buy one 4 GB stick if you only need 8 GB total.

The brand itself shouldn't matter - RAM is pretty commoditized these days, and all brands are fairly similar in reliability. The laptop should work with any brand of RAM.

That should work. The caching SSD wouldn't be helping much at that point, but I don't think there should be any technical issues having the caching SSD + a regular SSD instead of a caching SSD + a hard drive.

A good question for someone else here would be whether it would be possible or beneficial to disable the caching SSD after putting in a regular SSD.

I don't completely follow this part, but I think that since you already have a boxed copy of Windows 8, you could install it from that disc instead, and I think it would work to put the serial number on your laptop in when asked for that. You wouldn't get any Acer-specific software by doing this, however (which may be a good thing). Making a recovery disk from the existing install would likely re-add any software that came with the computer in addition to Windows when re-installing.

If you are reinstalling Windows 8 anyway, there shouldn't be any risk to using a USB recovery drive instead of a DVD. In my experience it's not quite as easy to make a USB recovery drive as a DVD one, but I'm by no means an expert on that. It looks like the R7 doesn't have a DVD drive, so the USB option may be easier when re-installing in that case.

Someone else will have to answer as to what the expected performance benefit would be - I've never had a laptop with a caching SSD. I'm sure there would be a performance difference - the question is whether it's something you'd notice day to day.

Hope this helps!

 

I see the words windows 8 so i'll post the obligatory > StartIsBack - real start menu in Windows 8

Based on the above poster, if you've never done it before + the fact ti's funky design laptop + the fact it takes torx i'd lean towards taking it to profession. However grab a torx screw driver and watch a youtube video on how to do it.

dropbox? Dubai must have really fast internet. the SSD will be a great upgrade. i through an SSD in my old Dell XPS m1330 and with an extended batter or get 2 hours or better battery life and it boots in 30 seconds flat.

EDIT: HOLY CRAP! you have to tear it down to access the ram, wow! if you haven't touched a laptop before as far as upgrading goes you'd better be darned sure to watch several videos on how to take it apart and double watch them and if you have any questions be sure to ask. I'd honestly suggest take to and expert. One advantage is an Expert can clone the hard to drive to the SDD so no need to... well i would say no need to clean install but, these days new computer come with butt loads of crape ware.

one up side of a clean install as i just mention is no crap ware, OEMs (original equipment manufacturer [the brand]) love to put stupid demo softwares on their laptops, the up side of the clean install is not having any of that stuff which should help make use of that SSD and make for faster booting

so, be damn sure you watched some how twos and are gentle when taking it apart or have some one do it for you.

well that's my 2 cents after skimming through the some what fast. maybe some of my ramblings might be useful.

 

hi apollo

Thank you very much for you time, it did help yeah. I had to read it a couple of times but learned more.

Regarding the ram I’m a little worried now as I have paid for it and it’s on its way.

You mention two sticks of 4gb but as far as I understand I have ordered 1 8b stick, when you scroll down on the left it mentions very clearly in this listing there is 1 stick only.
So no issue with that and its non ECC which you made clear are good.

Only other issue I didn’t understand is dual band, its cl9 dual band memory,
does that mean it will only work with another 8bs stick or is the dual band ok; I hope this is not a problem. the motherboard of the r7 comes with 4gb stuck to it that cant be removed so im removing the 2b and sticking in the 8gb to give me 12gb total.

I think I’m going to only upgrade the ram now, it just seems too much hassle and hard work to upgrade to 256gb SSD as I’m no expert and don’t trust anyone to do it here. i will wait till some videos go youtube, its only a matter of time till some fantastic person sticks a video on youtube showing step by step how to upgrade the Harddrive.


I think upgrading the ram I can do, regarding static electricity, how do I stop that?

i seen on the videos online the longest and hardest part is removing rhe cover getting the new ram seems to be easy.

is it possible to get everything on to the new SSD before doing anything to the R7, cant i copy everything and put it on the new SSD drive before changing it over?

from what what you said im understanding that since im doing a clean new windows 8 from CD there is no need for the recovery disk?

i dont want to lose all the software that came with the machine and drivers but i guess no need to take the win8 from here as i have a copy, is there way of just taking the other software or can i download them later?

can you check t he link ram i sent you again if you go down you can see it mentions one stick and the people reviewing mention it also, is dual band a problem?

thanks for your reply cdoub..

your scaring me and confusing me, what do you mean i have to tear it out to replace them, one 4gb ram is stuck to the motherboard, the other 2b is not stuck and can be removed and replaced with the 8gb stick that i have bought giving me 12gb ram in total.

i want to keep the software that came with the acer, is there no way to keep the software and still do a clean install,

when you say clean install without oem software does that mean i can just replace the HD with a SSD and uses a external dvd drive to put the OS on the new SSD?

thanks lisa x

 

It just means it supports dual-band/dual channel mode. Which is all chips currently made in ddr3, I think.

Same with ECC.. it costs too much (read: more than non-ecc) to make, and the actual use of it when running normal parity checks is limited. What matters is that you have the same timing as the ram-chip currently in the system, and that you have free dimm slots. Mixing different sizes isn't an issue nowadays, by the way, so don't worry about that in case the first dimm is soldered. The problem usually is that bioses come with forced settings that match only the ram shipped with the laptop..

So what you want is a similar chip with similar timing as the one you have. Shouldn't give you any issues as long as you can get off the back plate, and so on.

Biggest advantage when switching to an ssd is that it's completely silent, and that it uses less power, honestly. Snappiness and so on is good, of course. But it's typically not going to give you much benefit over an automatically caching ssd/hdd hybrid, no. And for small read and write operations, the improvement isn't necessarily going to be noticable. Lots of situations where you do notice, but how often do you compress huge files, or copy files from one part of the disk to another.. But since you can get, say, a crucial 360Gb or 480Gb ssd, with very good read and write, for a reasonable amount of money, in 7mm height, there's really no reason not to take advantage of it.

I don't know how Acer does this, or how much of their software you actually use. But you might want to consider installing the OS from scratch via usb or external drive after switching the disk, like suggested over there. Reducing the size of the original disk to the size of the ssd. Then cloning the drive and then expanding the partitions again might work. But when Windows detects hardware changes, it's a nightmare. So you might want to just skip the entire thing and install it over again. If Acer has a "recovery cd set" or something of that sort you can either burn yourself, or create somehow, all the better. But.. variable results.

..if you don't actually use specific windows software anyway, consider just installing linux. OpenSuse and Ubuntu are pretty easy.

Also, rep for best thread title in a long while. Good luck, Lisa.

 

hi cdoub...

your scaring me now, what do you me i have to tear it down to access the ram..... that doesnt sound good at all..


for the SSD is it possible just to make a recovery disk to have all the OEM and not the win 8 then do a clean instal of win 8 and put the oem software on the new SSD,

i dont want to try to take the old OS from the HD to new SSD from what i read doing a new copy of WIN 8 is best only problem is from what i read everywhere you can not do a win 8 install unless there is already a win8 OS on the harddrive, the win 8 wont allow you to put in the product KEY if there was no win 8 on the HD drive already, it has to have a windows OS on it to install the win 8!!!

this sounds crazy , can anyone confirm

 

Thanks for your reply, i dont want to lose win8 as the entire point of this laptop is the touchscreen. its the main reason i got it.


if i do a clean install of win 8 it wont work will it as the OS has something that stops it from puttting in the product key unless your upgrading a current window OS, i been told you cant put the product key unless you are installing over a windows Os.

the ram is matching all the stats of the existing ram.. its matching but dual band which i understand from you is no problem

how do i stop the static shock when doing the ram.?

 

Static shock actually burning computer parts isn't really a problem unless you work in a carpet packaging and cellophane factory, I think. Never had an issue with it. Still.. you can hold your finger on the metal case, and touch the metal next to it with the screwdriver before touching the chips. Used to do that, just in case.

But that's a bit of a problem. If you can't install from scratch (I've sort of held off on win8 because of that.. do they expect me to install win7 again, before "upgrading", every time I reinstall..?). So then you have to clone the disk, like you say, and hope for the best. Just make sure that the size of the partitions on the drive you have has a total size lower than the total size of the target drive, and the actual copy and so on at least will work. Lots of tools that will create a mirror like that equally well. You can change the size of the partitions in the admin tab. Or in any amount of partition managers, like Partition Wizard (neat free tool) or Partition Magic (neat expensive tool).

 

please check out this short video if its that easy doing the SSD upgrade i can do it no problem, only problem with this is not doing win 8, will it matter since its cloning, i have the external toshiba multi drive.
acer has a recovery disk option.

let me know if doing it this way is possible with win 8 please.it seems very easy as he did.

also is the software better for cloning or the ones you suggested, i want the safest one, no issues paying if i have do.

i could even bring the expert in to do it this way, problem with dubai and things like this is u cant trust anyone, so i would rather have it done in house in front of me.


let me know please is what this guy did is possible, super easy and the worst thing that could happen is just to put the old hard drive back in.


doing it as he has is it better doing a clean new install with windows 8 new CD or just to clone like he has.


i just hear win 8 is really not nice taking on new hardware.

 

ok now im sure i can do it, check what the samsung comes with.

this was the part i was worried about the most, samsung comes with the software & adaptor.

Samsung SSD - A Guide to using the Samsung Data Migration Tool - YouTube


let me know if you think its ok. nobody told me the SSD the comes with everything you need out of the box so very easy to do,

cheers

rob

 

Uhm, foxy_Lucy is 'rob'?


Okay...

 

haha talking to rob on another fourm, copy paste gone wrong on word,
its just lisa thanks, the foxy part is cause lisa was taken..

i wanted to know if this adapter is the right one to use for setting up the SSD to clone using the samsung software

New Black SATA to Dual USB 2 0 for 2 5" HDD SSD Cable Connector Data Transfer | eBay

 

That seems like it should work (I've never used one though), but a USB 3.0 version would be much faster...

 

thanks for your reply.

i just have one problem im not sure about, since im using the samsung migration tools, i noticed that the 5400rpm HD in the asprire is 500gb + the SSd is 256 Gb, its a new laptop so there is less the 50 GB on but i seen some place that the migration software will refuse to make the clone if the new hard drive is smaller then the one you copy from..

does that mean i have to buy an SSD more then 500GB, i need 256 gb max.

i read some place you can make the C partition smaller, im not sure what that means but is that possible ?

 

I prefer brunettes sorry.

 

I just noticed it, blond(e).

 

Aand, it's weekend, isn't it.

Yes. Given that the disk isn't full, on a reasonably unfragmented drive this typically takes a couple of seconds, no data-loss, etc.

You can do it in the windows admin tools.. I like partition wizard. Since it sees the difference between gpt-partitions and normal partitions. Easier when you expand the partitions later.