Samsung Series 7 Chronos 15.5" Upgrading to SSD Questions

Hi!
I am certainly considering upgrading my Samsung Series 7 Chronos to have a SSD hard drive. I found this one online:
Newegg.ca - SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD500BW 2.5" 500GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
I did some research and realized that the SSD has the same form factor as the 5400 RPM HDD that's already in the laptop (2.5").
But I'm also concerned because I noticed that the SSD is a Sata III, while the hard drive is a Sata II.
Do you guys think it would work?
Or should I consider another solid state? I want around 500GB of space on it.
Thanks!

 

Many Series 7 owners have replaced their HDD with an SSD. And owners of previous years' models often move the HDD to the optical bay using a special caddy. You didn't say which model you have, Series 7 Chronos includes many models and sub-models since its first release in 2011.

Check these recent posts if you have a pre-2013 model; they also contain several relevant links to the threads for those models.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...es-7-chronos-amd-hd8870m-588.html#post9276738

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...6-models-np700z4-np700z5-362.html#post9259321

Check the Owners Lounge for the 2013 models if that is what you have. It contains extensive discussion of this subject.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...unge-np770z5e-np780z5e-np870z5e-np880z5e.html

 

Another SSD to consider is the recently arrived Crucial M500. It also comes in 7mm thickness. The capacity is slightly less than the Samsung due to some memory being set aside for over-provisioning, which helps maintain the performance.

John

 

Any suggestions what to do with the 8GB expresscache once I upgrade. I heard you can't use it for dual boot.

 

Hi lopa8245, welcome to NBR.

No, unfortunately you cannot boot the onboard iSSD directly. If you were to put an OS on it, you would have to boot it via a boot manager on the Active/Boot partition of the newly installed SSD.

If my ExpressCache was larger (say 32GB, or even 20GB) I would definitely squeeze my Win8 in there (disable hibernation to avoid HIBERFIL.SYS, and relocate pagefile to another drive). You could put a Linux on it. Otherwise you can put infrequently used programs on it, or if you have a folder tree with installation files.

Just try to avoid excessive writing so you don't wear it unnecessarily. It's on the motherboard, so you cannot easily replace it, and if you ever want to sell the laptop, you want it to still be working.