mSATA questions for the Y500

I'll just jump right into it.

1) How difficult will it be to remove the casing and the current 16GB mSATA and replacing it with the Crucial 256GB mSATA or the Plextor M5 256GB mSATA? (Opinions on both would be awesome)

2) How would I transfer all my boot-up data to the mSATA and how would I transfer other data in the future?

3) What EXACTLY should be put on the mSATA? Obviously boot-up data, but what else? Movies? Games?

Thanks !

 

For 3), obviously put in your OS files and relevant boot-up data, but other than that, put in anything that you frequently use, which typically have somewhat sluggish loadup times. That means all of your favorite video games, plus some large programs e.g. photoshop.

Movies, small programs, and other media stuff tend to load instantaneously even out of non-SSD hard drives, so they really shouldn't occupy the valuable SSD space.

 

So it is basically copying and pasting what you want in area A or area B. Sounds easy enough.

 

1)
Its pretty easy to replace a msata ssd.and it doesn't stays in deep when u open the back unlike hdd and wificard
U can see rams and msata ssd soon after removing back panel. And u will find msata ssd fixed with a small screw. After removing a little screw it will popped out. Then u can remove and place the new one
Its pretty simple

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

Thanks a lot !

 

1) Piece of cake. The process is identical to swapping out laptop RAM or a miniPCIe card. Pop off the bottom cover, remove current mSATA card, replace it with the new one. Replace cover, pop open a beer.



2) If you want the most time-efficient way, then just go with a clean install of Windows and rebuild your system (yes, again). Pop open a beer.

Your other option is to use cloning software (Macrium Reflect or Clonezilla), and go through a time-consuming, frustrating, but ultimately very satisfying learning experience. If this is the first time you're using cloning software, then you're going to make mistakes (each of which will cost you a few hours to research & fix). You're probably going to run into situations where your laptop is unbootable, and require you to research how to fix the problem. And then even if you get everything "working" properly, you'll eventually realize that you still made some mistake somewhere (e.g. you left your boot partition onto a different drive, or didn't clone your drive in a way that was cluster-aligned). And even knowing all of that going into the process, you still might run into situations where it's easier to just re-install Windows and rebuild your system anyway. If you go this route, be ready to save the beer until the end. You definitely want to stay sober through this process.

I've exchanged enough messages with you that I'm guessing you're going to go with the 2nd option (cloning). Just remember, I check my PM's pretty frequently if you get stuck anywhere.



3) You want to put your OS, apps, and games on the SSD. These will benefit from the speed of an SSD.
You want to put your bulk media content (photos, music, videos, pr0n, etc) on to the 1TB mechanical HDD. These bulk media items eat up a lot of space, and do not benefit from the speed of an SSD.

As a simple rule of thumb: If it gets onto your computer by going through some type of Install / Setup process, it belongs on the SSD. If it gets onto your computer by a simple drag-and-drop copy process, then it belongs on your 1TB mechnical HDD.

 

Thanks again for the great response and the great help. You do know me too well. I am on leave from college anyways so it gives me something to so. I've never attempted to use this software so it should be an adventure. This was really a good read and I think you know you'll receive some PMs by yours truly.

 

Two bits of advice for you:

1) Start with this thread. It covers the two of the most likely problems you'll run into when cloning (i.e. drive isn't bootable after the cloning process, and 4KB cluster alignment when moving from mechanical HDD --> SSD).
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ideapad-essential/716093-y500-how-do-i-get-win-8-iso-msata-ssd.html

2) Macrium Reflect is free.