I did it a couple of years ago to my Acer laptop (Win 10) the difference in startup etc was truly astounding. I put a 128GB SSD in place of the original 500GB HDD and then took out the DVD drive and put the 500GB drive in its place in a caddy. All my data is on the HDD and the system runs on the SSD, works a treat. I used Macrium Reflect to clone the original disk. The SSD cost me about £60 and the caddy was £10.
Apologies if what follows is 'teaching granny to suck eggs' but I have installed HDDs with SSDs on a number of PCs and Laptops over the past few years for myself and a few non computer savvy friends so thought a couple of pointes might help. SSDs are without doubt the way forward. PARTITIONING AND HOUSEKEEPING prior to cloning is a good idea A bit like de-cluttering before moving house.Obviously cloning software requires the target disk to be at least the same size as the source disk. e.g. if the HDD is 1TB it will not clone onto a 250 or 500GB SSD? I fitted a 128GB SSD into my laptop a few years back (128 and 256 were affordable) having removed the 500 GB HDD Obviously quart into pint pot does not work so prior to that I partitioned the HDD and moved all the doc file photos etc. to a separate partition and the OS to the C partition and cloned that (I have the full Acronis suite so it makes life easier). Nevertheless WIn10 OS does allow quite a lot of disk management nowadays. PUT REDUNDANT HDD INTO EXTERNAL USB CASE (cheap on internet and a 5 minute job). YOU will still have files etc that you can transfer at leisure or use it as external backup target drive I also did something similar with my PC and now have a collection of external HDD/USB that I use for backup and file storage (photos etc. Personally I do NOT backup to the Cloud as I like to keep everything local - part paranoia re security (and no I don't have any porn or dodgy stuff). My old PC which I use in the studio has the OS on SSD and the music files projects stored on a large internal HDD. I went from 2 minutes or more to Window fully loaded s down to 30 seconds and only that slow because I have to use a login, I have some apps that load on startup and also the AV and security software does some checks. It is usually OS and apps on HDD that slow stuff down and need to be on SSD. Files etc are still pretty quick even when still on HDD . Gaming may well be another matter but I don't play games on PCs RELIABILITY Below is an interesting article on life expectancy. Years ago the number of rewrites available on SSDs was limited leading to errors hence the recommendations to regularly back them up (although that applies to any storage devices) relevant to meas as my SSDs are now quite old. Modern technology has vastly improved them though in reliability, capacity and cost. . BACKUPS I have only ever had to resort to reinstalling a backed up image once and apart from the worry that the backup reinstall might fail ( you never know until you have to do it) but it worked like a dream. From having a PC constantly rebooting on start up with a corrupted drive including boot sector(power cut whilst writing to disk I reinstalled the C Drive in a matter of minutes. By having the OS C drive partition imaged it saves having to reinstall the OS then installing all the software you subsequently loaded on top from CDs then re-apply all the updates and patches since the original CD was installed. Absolute ball-ache. I only ever had to do that once and it took me an entire weekend! Always remember to create a bootable startup disk too. I regularly back p the 'file' partition but less frequently the C drive (only if there is new software, new patches or OS had done an update) HTH. ttps://www.compuram.de/blog/en/the-life-span-of-a-ssd-how-long-does-it-last-and-what-can-be-done-to-take-care/
I've just upgraded my laptop last night, replacing the old hard drive with an SSD. The laptop is about 3 years old, but it feels like a whole new machine again. It boots a lot quicker, applications open quicker as well, it's just a breath of fresh air.
I don’t really need to add to this as others have already pretty much covered everything but yes, they are definitely worth it! I’m always buying new PC parts for my husband for his birthdays and Christmas. This was one of his requests last year which I duly got. I then didn’t think much about it again until my work computer got one (and now I see why he’d been asking for it). This birthday (10 days ago) was a new CPU, which meant he needed a new motherboard which in turn meant he needed new RAM (and there’s no point not getting the bigger sizes if buying new anyway). He must be able to Frankenstein loads of basic to decent computers with all the spare parts that I’ve upgraded.
I cloned my 500GB HDD onto a 128GB SSD, you just have to make sure that the data doesn't exceed the space available. I think I had to delete stuff (after copying onto a backup device) and then use a partition editor to reduce the size of the partition to the same size as that on the SSD.
I already had one with a 300GB disk in it, so as outlined in my earlier post I put the HDD in a caddy which fits into the space vacated by the DVD ROM. I then got a USB cable to attach the DVD ROM for the odd time it's needed.
Well I have it (Samsung Evo 970 plus 500GB NVMe V-NAND) going to install tomorrow, fresh install of Windows10 Didn't go for the 1TB as it was a bit pricey & I think 500GB will be ok.
I bought a new cyclic rambulator for my womble attachment, which greatly speeded up the notherwism process. However, it wasn't cheap, as it contains crystals of pure drangulite. Worth it if you've been experiencing blatterwisps on the left hand side of your gibbox. Most people however won't notice much difference, unless they've previously installed a kalian sub-process running in the trottelground.
Did my daughter's lap-top and my music recording desk-top yesterday. Used Acronis to clone existing drives. Much easier than I'd feared. Performance improvement is marked.
As long as the agalite strut alignment is equal to the pritter pin tolerances then you should be fine.