Upgrading laptop to SSD but I have questions.

My laptop is the Sony sve14a27cxh. I plan on replacing the HDD with a SSD but I want to keep the HDD for storage space. I don't need much space but I would rather not lose my 1TB of space. I figure the best way to do this is to remove the optical drive that I never use on my laptop with a hard drive caddy. However, I do not know which drive caddy to get. I keep seeing 12mm or 9.5mm drive caddies to buy, but I do not know how to figure out which one to buy for my laptop. Is the size referring to my HDD size of the optical drive size? Also, would any optical drive caddy work as long as it is the correct size? Like would the caddies that are $10-15 on ebay/amazon work? Also, are there any tips I should know of? I was thinking of buying a samsung 840 series drive. Is this a good drive? Thanks guys!

 

You might consider getting a 256GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD at ~$200, and making that your boot drive, together with the 1TB HDD as a secondary drive.

The ODD is a separate issue; you can pull it out to save weight (put 3M blue masking tape over the hole), or leave the ODD in when you need an ODD.

If you do this, then do a fresh install of whatever Windows version you are using to the newly installed mSATA drive.

gparted can turn off the boot status of your existing 1TB HDD, which you'll want to do if you do my above suggestions.

For my recent gparted comments see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sd-setup-bootup-error-help-3.html#post9075884

I'd pull out the 1TB HDD drive, put in the 256GB mSATA drive, and do a fresh install of Windows to the mSATA, with BIOS/SATA setting set to AHCI. Once the laptop is set up with a boot mSATA drive, then reconnect the HDD in the main bay; but be sure that you've already reset the HDD to not have a "boot flag"

 

12.5 or 9.5mm is the height of the bay itself - or if you wish, the thickness of the optical drive. You have to get a caddy that has the same thickness. However, if your hard drive is 12.5mm thick (and many 1TB drives are), it will not fit in that caddy, so measure it before ordering the caddy.

As far as I can tell, your Vaio can fit a 9.5mm caddy, like this one: Newmodeus caddy or this one (3x cheaper): 9.5mm caddy

By the way, if the hard drive doesn't fit, you can always install the SSD in the caddy - but you'll need to switch them around (HDD out -> SSD in the main bay and back) if you ever want to use the optical drive again...

 

Thanks for the replies guys! The 1 TB HDD is 12.5mm. If I put the SSD in the ODD won't the speed be reduced?

EDIT: NVM just found out the HDD is 9.5mm as well that means the hdd will fit in the ODD.

 

Will speed be reduced? Well chipset only supports 2 SATA 3 so how they configure? But with a HDD SATA 2 will do fine. So you are good to go I would say.

 

I highly doubt the speed will be reduced - if both the HDD and ODD use SATA, they should be the same speed. I know there are laptops with mixed SATA-3 and SATA-2, but I've never seen one use SATA-2 and SATA-1 - it's either one or the other. Plus your laptop is new, coming with a 9.5mm 1TB drive, so the ODD should use SATA2 for sure.

Btw, what 1TB hard drive do you have that is 9.5mm? I know only the newer models are, would be interested in getting a couple myself...

 

I really appreciate all the help guys! I guess that was a misconception I heard about that the ODD drive caddy could only handle SATA 1 speeds so im glad my HDD will still work

The drive is the toshiba mq01abd100. Looks like they run for $70 on newegg. I plan on buying a SSD next time I see a good deal on slickdeals. I've heard that the samsung 840, crucial M4, and intel 520 are the drives to go with. Is this true? Which would you guys buy? Also, what's up with this TLC vs MLC stuff for SSD? I plan on getting a 120 gb drive since thats all my budget can afford.

 

TLC is 840, MLC is 830 & 840 pro. TLC looks like it is cheaper to manufacture and performance and longevity is less than MLC, but it may not be such in a way that a normal user will notice. It is however heavily debated. I read a lot of those discussions and ultimately opted to go with the TLC 840 at 120GB. Even if it only lasts two or three years I am banking on SSD prices coming down dramatically in that span and I have every intention of upgrading to a larger drive in a year or so. Here is one of many resources I used in my decision...

AnandTech - Samsung SSD 840: Testing the Endurance of TLC NAND

 

Having an 128GB Samsung PM810 I was inclined toward a Samsung 840 256GB but I have found that Samsung 840 (non PRO, TLC) it's about the same price as Crucial M4 and about the same performance, with Crucial M4 being advantaged by its MLC NAND memory. So I went the Crucial M4 route.

 

I've researched it a lot before buying my SSDs. I bought 3 Samsung 470 256GB, two of which work fine (knock on wood!) and the third failed when my laptop depleted its battery while in sleep mode in my backpack - I haven't taken it out for ~3 weeks and hibernation was disabled. Not the most frequent situation, but it bricked without any error, just disappeared from BIOS.

The Intel 320 has a lot of failure reports (8MB bug), any OCZ looks out of the question, the Samsung 830 and 470 are the most reliable so far.

The Crucial M4 is also very reliable, was my first choice but I don't have SATA3 and the 256GB model was more expensive so I went with the Samsung 470, but I'd buy it right now if I needed an SSD now...

TLC drives are supposed to last less than MLC, but from what I can tell, they're good enough for normal work.
The 120GB Samsung 840 drive tested in this thread lasted 432 TiB.

For comparison, here are some MLC results:
Samsung 470 64 GB - 478 TiB
Crucial M4 64 GB - 768 TiB
Corsair Force 3 120GB - 1015 TiB (most fail way sooner though )
OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB - 393 TiB (other OCZ drives are even worse!)
Samsung 830 256GB - over 6,000 TiB (I lost count )

Accounting for the size (larger drives = more writes), the Samsung 840 TLC drive lasted around half the writes of the Samsung 470 and around a third of the writes of the Crucial M4. Good enough for most work, but not good enough for the price in my opinion...

Anyway, my recommendation - Crucial M4 (best) or Samsung 830 or if cheap, Samsung 470... But still, be sure to have a warranty on any of them and keep backups .

 

Thanks for the info guys! What about speed between the 840 and the M4? right now im leaning towards the m4. How should I backup the SSD? Would doing backups to the 1Tb HDD that I will have in the computer be good enough? What software would be best to use?

 

Here is a comparision between 840, 840 Pro and a M4:
AnandTech - Samsung SSD 840 (250GB) Review

 

one last question, I don't see an option for achi in my bios. how will that affect me?

 

Don't worry: your BIOS is AHCI by default - but without it; you'd have no TRIM support and the performance, low write amplification and sustainability of your new SSD would all go out the window (eventually... like 2 months or less).

 

Good to hear. Now to wait till the M4 goes on sale since im in no hurry. Any recomended guide I should read about tweaks for ssd's and installing an ssd? Also, what should I use Windows 7 or 8?

 

Windows 8 x64 Pro by far to fully utilize the latest hardware like SSD's - as for tweaks?

Clean install of the O/S, any additional necessary drivers and the programs you will actually use.

Anything else is a detriment to the user experience and to the performance of your SSD based setup.

Good luck.