Upgrading ASUS N550JK to SSD help!

Hello Guys and Gals, Just want to start off by saying thanks for the help in advance!! i really appreciate it.

i want to upgrade my ASUS N550JK laptop to a 250gb or 500gb SSD, and havent really found any clear instructions on exactly what i will need for this upgrade, and exactly how to do it. If you have any tips or tricks, or know of anything ill need to purchase along with the SSD that would be awesome!

Thanks in advance!!

 

Hi JBW,

I am in the process of upgrading a N750JV to SSD so have been through the jumps on this process very recently.

Step 1: Contact your local Asus office and get, in writing, their position re warranty impact (locally they said no until I threw toys all over the place)
Step 2: Ask Asus to recommend one their Authorised Service Providers (ASPs) to do the actual drive cloning & switch (more likely not to kick against warranty carry through)

If you're not concerned about the warranty, skip steps 1 and 2 and get yourself a copy of "Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 4.0"

URL: Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - System migration to Solid State Drives (SSD) - Overview

Check out their website and you should find details on the "How" aspects.

PS: Avoid some of the freeware "cloning" apps - apparently they don't all work reliably.

Dave

 

What kind of hardware, besides the SSD itself, do i need to make this upgrade? and i am not to terribly worried as i have bought an extended warranty through square trade,

Thanks a ton for the reply by the way. was very helpful! i really appreciate it.

 

Hi JBW,

I don't know - I handed mine over to an ASP to do the job as I don't have the time and don't want any foul-ups to the result of my ignorance...

Sorry...

Dave

PS: When I collect the laptop, I'll ask some pertinent questions around hardware and the Paragon software specifically (the ASP uses it which is where I got the name). After I've checked out how it boots/loads/shuts-down and performs in general (copy to/from fast external drives, etc), I'll post my impressions.

BTW: The drives that are going in:

1) SSD: Samsung 840 PRO 256GB
2) HDD: Western Digital 2.5" Red 1TB (SATA6G/IntelliSpeed - 5400-7200rpm)

The WD Red is a 2.5" NAS drive and features enhanced stability and high sustained data transfer rates, so am curious to see how it performs - how to get it to run at 7200rpm, etc.

Ciao for niao

Dave

 

Dave, sorry to tell you but there is no such thing as IntelliSpeed; you must be confusing it with IntelliPower.

The speed doesn't change either - it is a fixed speed and nowhere near 7200RPM (ever).

I don't know what convinced you to put a NAS spec'd drive into your notebook - but hope it works well for you.

 

This Alzheimer's is beginning to become a problem...

You're 100% right and I got things very confused - I misread the spec sheet:

URL: WD spec sheet: 2.5" 1TB Red Drive

1) The trademark label is "IntelliPower" and NOT "IntelliSpeed"
2) Speed note: A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. For each drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM

Guess who missed the underlined word

Anyway, you're 100% right and I screwed up - my apologies and my thanks for pointing it out.

As far as using a NAS-spec'd drive, here is reasoning:

1) Asus N750JV chipset (Intel H86 Express) provides 2 x SATA6G ports - 1 per HDD drive bay (ODD bay uses SATA3G port)
2) The only 2.5" 1TB HDD available locally (here in S. Africa) with a SATA6G interface
3) Shock-resistance spec from WD shows same rating for all their 2.5" drives (including Red) so shock won't be a problem)
4) Local price of WD red 2% higher than competing SATA3G 2.5" 1TB - nothing in it
5) Tests with Red in Lian Li EX-10Q USB 3.0/SATA6G enclosure, returning data rates of around 140MB/sec at peak (ve 110MB/sec for competing drive) (probably contributed to assumption re speed variability)

So, not much diff in price, seems faster and the rest of the specs are much of a muchness with shock-resistance not penalised for NAS usage.

Dave

 

Thanks for the reply.

I can follow the logic of your decision - but I would still insist on a Travelstar in my own notebook (if I was still using HDD's on my mobile systems, of course).

Much faster real world use from the Hitachi for the same/less cost, less heat and equal or less power requirements too - and, 7200RPM performance advantage that shows up in small/random file access workloads that are more common than one might think (or maybe; I'm just more sensitive to those kinds of slowdowns from a lower RPM drive).

I hope the RED turns out a good fit for your use. Please keep us informed as you get more experience with it.

(I would have never thought to use a RED in a notebook)!

 

Unfortunately, Hitachi drives are not actively marketed here in S. Africa - just two brands readily available with decent product ranges - Seagate & WD - as the market is fairly small. I had been using Seagate Momentus 2.5" 7200rpm SATA3G 750GB drives, but they've dropped out of the local catalogue with no obvious "heir apparent" in their stable.

I've just taken delivery of two more Reds - for use in Lian Li EX-10Q 2.5" USB3.0 external enclosures - and have installed the drives in the enclosures and am running a "write-to-Red" test via USB3.0 using TeraCopy from a Seagate ST3000DM001 SATA6G 7200rpm drive connected to the ASMedia SATA6G controller which is attached to a PLX 8-lane PCIe switch (mobo is an Asrock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional) and the copy speed on a 200GB movie file copy run is averaging at around 105MB/sec (system other wise idle apart from this browser window). That's quite acceptable when compared to 5400rpm/SATA3G drives which battle to hit 80MB/sec...

Later, I'll try a "read-from-Red" test and copy the same files back and see how that runs...

I won't try any "official" benchmark tests - the above tests reflect very much my most common usage on the desktop to external application.

Until later...

Dave

LATER!

The "write-to-Red" stayed - pretty much - constant at ~105MB/sec - with one exception on one file only, when the read-to-write speed dropped to 2MB/sec.
The "read-from-Red", unsurprisingly, returned virtually the same result - ~105MB/sec.
The anomalous 2MB/sec turned out to be due the source file on the ST3000DM001 being rather fragmented (that particular 3TB drive is sitting at ~90% full and the file in question was created very recently. Its probably time to clean up that drive and run a defrag on it.

Obviously, any disk copy is going to be limited by the slowest link in the chain, so - once the laptop is back with the two 5400rpm drives switched to the SSD & Red, it'll be interesting to repeat a smaller scale test (maybe 50GB of data) read from the Red and written to the SSD and then the reverse path run (the SSD shouldn't provide any bottleneck). Will also try a Red-to-Red copy (one on USB 3.0) to get some idea of the Intel H86 Express' USB3.0 performance.

Dave

 

I like how you test!

BM's are useless; only real world tests (real to you) should be the basis of judging if a new component is superior or not.

The sequential results are pretty impressive for the RED - looking forward to your next tests.

 

I did this exact upgrade 3 weeks ago. You need the SSD and a torx screwdriver and that's it (I used a very small regular flat head screwdriver, because I did not have torx). You unscrew all the screws at the bottom of the unit. Take off the bottom, you will see the hdd. Detach it, put in the SSD, put screws back and done. Very straightforward, no complications. Btw you can watch a video of it on youtube as well. Good luck!