Upgrading new laptop from hdd to sdd

[manchester1]

Hi,
Ive just bought a new laptop. An Acer Aspire v3. Screen size - 15.6 in
Processor - Intel Core i7 3610Q
RAM - 8 DDR3 GB
Hard Drive - 750 GB
Operating System - Windows 8
Optical Drive - DVD SM
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M (2GB dedicated)

I am buying the laptop so i can use Photoshop CS5 to edit photos, not professionally so i wont be majorly batch editing.

I was thinking of upgrading the Hard drive to SSD and just using an external hard drive to store my edited photos.

How easy is this to replace, and is there any SSD you recomend?

Is it better to keep the HDD in the laptop and get an external SDD?

Any help appreciated as im not so clued up on these things!

 

[RealBeast]

It is a trivial task to replace a HDD with an SSD, but then you need to reinstall your OS so you will need a Windows 8 installation disk. It would be "better" to have say a 256Gb SSD internal and an external drive for storage. You will be amazed how much space is really on a 256Gb. You can get an inexpensive external case for the current internal 750Gb.

I would recommend a 256Gb Samsung 830, Crucial M4, or Intel SSD -- whichever you can get the best deal on, which should be around $160 on sale.

 

[manchester1]

Hi,
Just got a new laptop pre-installed with Windows 8.
Also got a 256gb SDD to put in it.

Any way of transferring Windows 8 to the sdd and then I can install the sdd? I didn't get a windows 8 installation disc with my pc, and don't have an installation code or anything?

Any one can help?

Many thanks

 

[RealBeast]

First -- make a system repair disk, just type that into the run window and use the wizard. Also check your Acer information pages to see if there is a full install disk on the drive, which they often do now rather than supply you the disk -- if so make a DVD of that image. Your OS key should be on a small label on the bottom or back of the laptop, in case you need it.

Then just clone the HDD to the new SSD using EaseUS Todo backup, Ghost 15, or True Image.

Be sure to clone the SRP (system reserved partition) first! Then clone the OS partition and then any system restore partitions that came on the original HDD.