installing ssd on envy 14

Hi I am new to the forums and have looked for info about my question about ssd's in the envy 14 here but all I came up with were discussions of the ssd and how to save gb's on it and what to do after installing it.

But my envy 14 is in the mail and I want to buy an ssd from third party and when I get the envy with the hdd, how do I install the ssd in the computer without having to do clean install keeping all original files.

and sorry if there is directions for this on the forum because I checked the owner lounge and there was no links on instructions to install and looked through threads and found nothing.

 

You could get an external HDD case, stick the SSD in there, and clone the drive. Then, take the hard drive out and replace it with the SDD. That way, you get the SSD and an external HDD to go along with it

 

thanks for the reply. I have a hdd case already, any suggestions on a program that would clone the hdd to an external usb drive?

 

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

Macrium Reflect is free and works well, you could also try DriveImage XML

 

thank you very much!!

I also got another idea which I should ask if it would work: Can I create the recovery discs on the hdd and then plug the ssd in the computer and run the recovery discs or will it not allow it?

 

That'll work too, but burning recovery disks will be a LOT slower than:

1) clone drive
2) partition HDD so that the old stuff is all on one partition, the rest is just free space for storage/whatever
3) if you need to reinstall, just reimage your SDD from the partition on the HDD

But burn disks just in case

 

Wow yea that is better and the partition on the hdd would still be there in case something goes wrong and I can still use it as external storage. Thanks for the replies, really helpful.

 

Eafd how the heck do you know everything about everything? Seriously you deserve a medal.

What ssd do you recommend? Aren't the new ones a heck of a lot faster than the last gen? I'm wanting a 256g

 

You can also, alternatively, just buy a 4 dollar eSata cord, which will plug into the right side of your computer's chassis. You can then use that, to clone the SSD without putting it into your laptop, then open up, remove the old drive and swap in the ssd. No need to buy an expensive, external enclosure.

 

He said he already has an enclosure and since he'll have an extra hdd and didn't say anything about selling it an enclosure may be pretty useful for using an external drive. I'm considering taking out the slot load and installing a second drive. There is really good thread on this.

 

Just a word on cloning a HDD to SDD...
Be aware of SSD partition alignment. You want the first partition to be offset by 1024k (optimal for write performance).

I've read of issues in the past of Macrium having problems with restoring to custom offsets. They could have fixed it by now, but have not seen anything.

-- also, the recovery disks will not work to restore to your SSD unless it's the same size as your HDD.

 

thanks for the heads up on the recovery disks. and awdotson talked about the sata cable which I have a question about; does it plug directly into the drive or it needs an enclosure or convertor?

edit: how do I go about the partition alignment

 

You already have an HDD converter thing, so you don't really need an esata cable.

If you wanted the esata cable, you'll need to either need to get an eSATAp -> both SATA data and power, or get another hard drive case that has either eSATAp or eSATA + USB power connectors. eSATAp is the connector on the side of your computer that supplies both USB and eSATA. eSATA does not carry power, so you either need the special powered combined eSATAp port or an eSATA case that is powered by USB. Confusing, I know.

Any which way, you're better off using your existing hard drive case unless there is already a hard drive inside. If there's already an HDD inside, use it anyway just for now and buy a second case later so you can use both.

 

^ Thanks, just what I wanted to know

 

This Post on sevenforums outlines creating a partition with diskpart. If you are set on trying to use Macrium, create the properly aligned partition on the SSD and restore into it.
Not sure, but you may have to resize your current OS partition to match the SSD partition (again, not familiar with how macrium would handle that situation)

 

hm I am considering a clean install now so windows 7 can do all its stuff for an ssd... so hows getting the drivers and original software for the envy. is it a pain?

 

As long as you have the swsetup folder, you're fine. Copy it off before you do a clean install, and also, people have found that a clean install runs more processes than a factory install.

The compromise would be a minimal system install, none of the bloat of the factory, with drivers and everything else already set up.

 

good to know that swsetup would have the drivers instead of hunting them down. and I was thinking about clean install because of all the tweaking windows 7 does when it is being installed on an ssd since the system install in the recovery would be for the original hdd if i am not wrong.