Ideas on SSD install/Upgrade w Hp Pavilion Laptop

Guys,

I am a "newbie" to this forum but not new to Toms Hardware. I have a Hp Pavilion dv9500 Laptop and I am having trouble swapping out the old Seagate 160 GB Hard drive for a 120 Vertex II SSD Hard drive. I am currently running Vista Home Premium w 3GB of ram. When I boot into Vista I can access the SSD Drive via USB cable connection. If I change the internal drive to SSD Vertex then the laptop doesn't see it and I can't load any OS. If I place regular old SATA drive in no problems. Has anyone had experience with this and can give me advice. I would appreciate any help at all. Thanks in advance!

I just set up a 120GB OCZ Summit in my HP dv7 with Vista Home Premium 64-bit. I had two HD bays, so I just popped the SSD in the open bay.

I have a 250GB SATA HD in there, but I was only using 100GB, so i was fine.

I spent a few hours deciding the best way to clone it, and during this time, I formatted the SSD using the Disk Management utility in the Computer Administration contol panel. I had to activate it or initialize it before I was able to format it. I'm not sure if this formatting step was necessary, but just wanted to let you know everything I did.

I used Acronis TrueImage Home to clone the 250GB onto the 120GB. I had it put the 10GB HP Recovery partition on the SSD, just in case I needed to restore my factory system later, and that left me with a 110GB C: Partition on the SSD. It took a few hours. I left it running overnight and it was done in the morning. Make sure to turn off your power saver options, or your display/computer will go to sleep while it's running.

Once it was done, I pulled out the SATA drive, popped in my SSD drive into the #1 HD bay, and it booted up just fine.

Then I put the SATA drive back into the #2 bay, and right now it's waiting to format. I was going to run for a few days before I cleaned my original drive. But it appears to be working fine. And now I have a 250GB storage drive for my media.

After you get it up and going, check the OCZ forums for the typical SSD Vista tweaks to speed up your SSD system.

Good luck!

Hi I am debating whether or not to put in an SSD hard drive into my HP dv7 laptop i see that you both have done it. Would you say it was worth it? If so I have been looking at the mtron 32g ssd. I havent looked at the two that you guys have used but i am about to.

I just need some input on how much better an SSD is compared to leaving my HD as is.