Boot Drive Help and Suggestions

I bought a new HP dv6t-7000 Quad Edition this summer and am enjoying it so far, but I originally planned to upgrade the drive when I had funds and considering I still have adequate money saved to comfortably do this I would like to upgrade soon.

My desire is to leave the laptop HDD (750GB) in the slot it is in and add a crucial m4 mSATA drive as a boot drive. I would like 256GB so as to have a cushion of space. If 128GB is adequate and you can justify this, I may consider that, but 256GB drives also seem to have higher performance from my understanding.

My question is, can anyone with experience setting up boot drives on an existing machine send me a link or provide instructions on the best way to move windows and all of my applications to the SSD while leaving the data behind on the mechanical. Crucial was very un-helpful saying they do not currently provide a mSATA data transfer kit. I know there are methods to do what I want to do, but as this is new territory I need to properly research the procedure I will use before I drop $225.

Any help is very much appreciated!!

 

Preferably you would do a fresh install of Windows and your applications on the SSD.

I would help with the transfer of your data from the HDD to the mSATA SSD but I honestly don't know a way. Was your notebook offered with an mSATA SSD from the factory? Make sure that if so, it can be used as a boot drive. You might want to ask in our HP Pavilion Forum subforum.

The larger SSDs typically perform better but it's a lot more money and if you're planning to use a hard drive for storage ... you're not going to end up using that much of the SSD and the performance difference isn't noticeable anyway. Better off going with the small drive IMO. I have a similar setup as what you're planning - a 120GB Intel SSD as my boot/application drive and a secondary 500GB hard drive for storage. I have mapped all my documents/pictures/music/games etc over to the hard drive, even my Internet downloads. In Windows 7 you can change the default locations for your libraries (see attached) - it takes just a few seconds. It has worked fantastically well for me. I would have gone with an 80GB SSD doing it again to save a few bucks.

 

Thank you very much!! That link should be incredibly useful... I appreciate the assistance. I will consider the 128GB as it is only ~$115 or so