Installing SSD into HP Pavilion 550-A17C Desktop PC with AMD A8-6410 Processor, 8GB Memory, 2TB HDD

[AFL2016]

Hi, so I recently bought a SSD (PNY CS1311 120GB 2.5" SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - (SSD7CS1311-120-RB)). I want to install it into my HP Pavilion 550-A17C Desktop PC with AMD A8-6410 Processor, 8GB Memory, 2TB HDD. I would like to install the SSD along side the HHD, with the SSD as my boot disk, and the HDD for storage. 

I have a few questions:

In my computer, do I need to buy a 2.5 inch to a 3.5 inch mount, or would a 2.5 inch mount be ok?

What type of SATA cable do I need to connect it?

Should I clone the HDD when setting up? Or is there a better approach?

Thanks in advance.

[WAWood]

AFL2016

I've done the "migrate to SSD" bit, so let me comment on just that part.

You will NOT be able to "clone" the 2TB HDD to an SSD simply because "cloning" means to make an exact copy of the original, and you obviously can not copy a 2TB drive to a much smaller SSD.

However, you can "migrate" the OS from the HDD to the SSD, it just takes some work to make it happen.

First this you have to do is use Disk Management to shrink down the OS partition on your HDD until the total of the size of that partition, and all other partitions on that drive, are small enough to fit on the SSD -- with about 10% to spare.

Second thing is to download and install Macrium Reflect on your PC.  This is a free partitioning tool that will allow you to then "clone" the contents of the HDD onto the SDD. Notice I put clone in quotes because what it actually is doing is copying all the partitions from the HDD to the SDD -- so the end result is the same as if you "cloned" the drive.

Then, do the following:

1) Connect the SSD to the PC using a USB drive adapter
2) Follow the instructions in this link: http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Cloning+a+disk
3) Shutdown the PC when done
4) Swap the drives and reboot the PC.

You should boot from the new drive without any problems.

Good Luck

[AFL2016]

Well I opened up my computer, only to tick me off. It appears there are no other SATA connectors on the motherboard. Nor are there any more power sources on the motherboard either. It looks like I bought a terrible computer... Ugh... 

Is there any other option? I looked into things I could try to buy to add more SATA connectors, but I don't understand that very well. Another option I thought of is possibly buying a SATA to USB, then adding attaching the HDD to one of the USB connectors in the back. I REALLY don't want to do that, but if there is no other way.....  I don't know, does anyone know what I can do here? I'll upload the pictures of the motherboard on here, hopefully someone will respond..

 

[Jay_101]

Hi,

Your upgrade options are extremely limited.

You have no PCIe x1 or x16 expansion slots.

You have an external 65 watt (laptop) power supply.

You cannot add a better graphics card to the system, again, no X16 slot on the system board. If you want to game this is not the PC to do it with.

The biggest bang for the buck, exclusive of adding a discrete graphics card, which you cannot do, is to add a 500GB or 1TB SSD.

Move the operating system to the SSD per WAWood. Keep the HDD OS install as a backup.

The system will be much faster. But it is not going to game very well.

Jay

[AFL2016]

I really appreciate the feedback, thanks jay. 

Well I don't game, so that's no big deal to me.

Man, I should have looked into these things before I bought this computer. Oh well, I guess my only option is to run a SATA to usb  from the HDD to the back of the computer if I want to keep both of the drives. I could still keep the HDD inside the tower if I did that. It's a totally ghetto solution, but apparently the only way. 

[AFL2016]

WaWood, sounds good, thank you.

Is it necessary to transfer all of the partitions to the SDD?  

The partitions I have are as follows:

• Boot partition (and primary partition)
• EFI system partition
• Recovery partition
• Another recovery partition
• OEM partition (it says also recovery image)

[AFL2016]

Well everyone, thanks for the help. I ended up going a completely different route however. If anyone stumbles upon this in the future it may be helpful for them, so I will explain what I did.

So,trying to follow the advice that was given me,  I tried shrinking the partition of the 2TB drive down as much as I could. Keep in mind I defragmented the drive, and moved everything off the HDD onto an external drive. At this point, there was less than 100 GB of information on that drive. However,  I was still only able to shrink the partition down to about 900GB in size. So, figuring it may be impossible to deal with that huge drive and try to clone the main partition to the SSD, I set it up a different way.

• First, I downloaded the "Windows 10 Download Tool". With that, I was able to create a bootable USB drive with the correct version of Windows 10. 
• I opened up the computer, mounted the SSD, detached the SATA cable from the old HDD, and moved it to the SSD.
• Pushing the escape button at startup, I was able to bring up the boot menu. 
• I changed the boot order so that USB was #1
• I rebooted the computer (this time it booted from the USB drive I created)
• I went through the process to reinstall windows 10 on the new SSD. From what I understand, Windows somehow recognizes the architecture of your old hardware, and thus the new version of Windows is automatically validated with your old license.
• I reinstalled the old programs I had on my computer, treating it like a new computer. 

Now all I have to do is drill a small hole in the back of the computer so that the I can feed the USB end of the SATA to USB cable that I will use to attach the old HDD. It will be connected as basically an external drive, although it is still inside the tower and mounted in there.

I'm pleased with the performance boost received from installing the SSD. Although, I'm not thrilled with the online tutorials that say this is an easy upgrade. Because, depending on what motherboard you have, and the size of SSD you are trying to install,  it may not be so much of an easy fix after all. Especially if you want to keep your old HDD for storage.

[Big_Dave]

@AFL2016

Before you start drilling holes, review the below image.

[AFL2016]

Thanks Dave. The drilling, however, isn't to mount the SSD, but to be able to run the cables from the SATA to USB out the back of the computer and into the USB slot and power source.

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Optical drives are on the way out so I will suggest an option for you. I would use the SATA port being using by the optical drive and then buy an external USB optical drive (if really needed) for $25 or less.  This way you can install your SSD internally. A $250 PC is not going to give you a lot of upgrade options.