How to upgrade your notebook to a SATA 2.5" SSD

[gospelmidi]

[QUOTE]... are there any specific best price/performance/reliability reccomendations from those kind people here who are more experienced with this? Stick with the brands that have the best reviews. No-name SSD brands can be the source of much frustration. Samsung is normally the best price/performance/reliability for non enthusiast upgraders. Intel is on the high side of price and there usually is a flip-flop between Intel and Samsung on performance.[/QUOTE]

I started on the wrong foot with Erico and Sparkles1, so they will disagree with my experience.  But it is my experience that Mushkin SSDs give the best performance and the highest reliability for the money.  Mushkin is well-known among overclockers and gamers as a top-tier memory module producer, in a class with Corsair, G.Skill, OCZ, Patriot, Super Talent, and maybe one or two others.  Mushkin distinguishes itself as a U.S. company, based in the U.S., with U.S. support by American techs who speak American English as their native tongue, and U.S. assemblers of memory modules built with quality foreign-fabricated chips.  Mushkin consistently supplies memory modules that are stable at as high clock speeds and as low CAS latency as the best of the competition.

That kind of performance has always come at a premium, performance for which those with a need for speed willingly pay a few dollars more.  Therefore, when I began investigating SSDs in 2013, at the time when Windows XP installations were approaching the end of the Microsoft support cycle, it was much to my surprise that Mushkin sold its new high-performance SSDs (555 MB/s read, 535 MB/s write) with 3-year warranties,  built in the U.S.A., for the same price as entry-level SSDs, and much lower than the premium prices which Samsung, EVO, and Intel SSDs command.  But then, memory modules which are stable at overclocked speeds have always been Mushkin's bread-and-butter, so one might expect Mushkin to have the inside track in high-performance SSDs.  Far from being a "no-name" generic bottom-feeder, Mushkin arrived at the dance early with reliable, high-performance SSDs, made in the U.S.A., at basic, "no-name" prices.  IMHO, no one else has ever come close to Mushkin's price to performance & reliabilty ratio, especially not the top-dollar brands sold by Fortune 500 companies, whose advertising dollars pay for those magazines that publish those top reviews of the best-known SSDs, which have such high visibility in the marketplace.

But because my second Mushkin Chronos SSD was only 7 mm high, compared to the 9.5 mm Seagate 5400 rpm HDD it replaced, I assembled my H-P laptop with the drive data cable folded awkwardly, causing a bad connection, which in turn kept my laptop from powering up.  It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that there was nothing wrong with my Mushkin SSD, only with how the drive data cable was situated.  But for this PEBCAK moment on my part, the mods have put all Mushkin SSDs on their no-fly lists.  I call foul; nothing could be further from the truth.  Mushkin manufactures and sells high-performance SSDs with excellent MTBF records for basic SSD prices.

(I am not a Mushkin employee.  I received no compensation for this unsolicited testimony.)

[skibbles]

Hi Everyone

could use some advice on installing a SSD on my HP DV7 6154ea laptop. 

decided to go down the route of a fresh install last minute instead of cloning which apparantly can cause problems and fresh install is always best for few reasons.

helps with partition alignment i'v read. Really can't afford for more problems so trying to do it right the first time.

Just need to know few things regarding installing drivers from CD. 

Would to be better to save Drivers for the laptop on the SSD along with OS.

Not sure about the Windows page file and if any other files need to know about which should have directories for saving directed to the HDD not SDD as their updated allot. Hope that makes sense..

would love to hear your thoughts..

[winnet]

Using Recovery Manager in Windows 8.1,  simply create a recovery image to a 32GB  USB flash drive and then install your new SDD in the laptop and boot from the USB recovery image and restore the hard drive image to the SDD.  Works like a charm.

[MartinSSS]

Hi,

How can I easily alter the host ID or lets say seri8al number of the HDD in the OS.

Should be donne via command prompt.

Thanks.

[Sparkles1]

Hi @MartinSSS,

To have the bios pickup a new hard drive boot to the bios screen.

Along the bottom is an option for defaults. ( an F key option).

Select it.  This will have it scan for attached hardware and should pick up the new hard drive.

To say thanks for replying please click the thumbs up icon below.

Good Luck!

[alexc1]

Hi everyone,

I have upgraded a 420 G2 to SSD Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB and I have used the original HP Windows 8 Pro Recovery CDs to perform a fresh restore. I have to say it was not straightforward, took me many rounds to install all the drivers and updates... Anyway now its done. 

But there is a few things that are bugging me due to this fresh install:

1. How to I take advantage of the 32 GB LiteOn LSS-32L6G-HP that was shipped with the laptop. What is the purpose of this cache and how do I restore it to it's normal use. It is detected but not assigned. Not sure of any RAID settings...

2. I noticed that on my old HDD I used to have two more partitions:

D:\ HP_RECOVERY (12GB NTFS)

E:\ HP_TOOLS (2 GB FAT32)

What are the role of these two partitions and is it useful to recreate them for Win 8.1? And how?

I am trying to restore this laptop to factory default with HP software and I thought the original HP CDs would do that but it didn't.

In the meantime I have also purchased Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 Pro, and created the Paragon recovery media on a flash drive, so I am ready to perform according to your advices.

Thanks a lot for your help,

Alex

[AlaskaSeal]

Hey there.
I am planning on getting a 250 gb ssd for my hp pavilion g6-2235us and it is a 500 gb hard drive. Would it be able to work?

[Sparkles1]

Hi @AlaskaSeal,

Welcome to the HP Forums!:smileyhappy:

It is a dynamite location  to find answers and information.

For you to have the best experience in the HP forum I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide.

Learn How to Post and More

I understand that you are considering reducing the size of your hard drive to a 250 GB and would like to know if it will work.

You do understand that the 250 GB drive will reduce your space to 1/2 of your current capacity.

Here is a link to the  HP Pavilion g6 Notebook PC Maintenance and Service Guide. Please note chapter 3, page 23, item 18 for a list of the recommended replacements.

Although a 250 GB hard drive is not listed it should work fine.

To say thanks for responding please click the thumbs up button below.

If this has addressed your query please choose solution provided to assist others.

Best of Luck!

[erico]

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@alexc1 wrote:

Hi everyone,

I have upgraded a 420 G2 to SSD Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB and I have used the original HP Windows 8 Pro Recovery CDs to perform a fresh restore. I have to say it was not straightforward, took me many rounds to install all the drivers and updates... Anyway now its done. 

But there is a few things that are bugging me due to this fresh install:

1. How to I take advantage of the 32 GB LiteOn LSS-32L6G-HP that was shipped with the laptop. What is the purpose of this cache and how do I restore it to it's normal use. It is detected but not assigned. Not sure of any RAID settings... The 32GB flashdrive is used by the INTEL IRST software technology as a cache  device to speed up hard drive access.

2. I noticed that on my old HDD I used to have two more partitions:

D:\ HP_RECOVERY (12GB NTFS) That is the recovery partition that is used when the F11 key is pressed from startup.

E:\ HP_TOOLS (2 GB FAT32) Those are the tools used by the PC Hardware Diagnostics UEFI

What are the role of these two partitions and is it useful to recreate them for Win 8.1? And how? You can't recreate theHP_Recovery Partition for Windows 8.1. You can install the UEFI Diagnostics to a usb flash drive by running the Diagnostics upgrade softpaq and choosing a USB flashdrive as the destination. 

I am trying to restore this laptop to factory default with HP software and I thought the original HP CDs would do that but it didn't.

In the meantime I have also purchased Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 Pro, and created the Paragon recovery media on a flash drive, so I am ready to perform according to your advices.

Thanks a lot for your help,

Alex

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The DVD recovery media that you should have created by use of the HP Recovery Media Creator utility can be used to recover your notebook to a factory state.

[alexc1]

Hi erico,

Thanks for your advice. I actually tried and I was given the error: "There were no writable device detected" (EliteBook 820 laptop come with no CD drive and inserting a 16GB flash drive in the USB port did not work either)

I called HP and they then advised me to pay $30 to order a full set of recovery media. 

Once I got the CDs I had to convert them to ISO images and to place them and boot from a USB flash drive. But I did not think about the partition creation...

It therefore did not end nicely... (Yes I should have anticipated that)

Here is some more questions:

1. How does HP technicians do to recreate all this when they replace a faulty hard disk?

2. Using Paragon, shall I manually backup the 😧 partition from my old disk and manually restore it on my new SSD drive?

3. Using Paragon, shall I manually backup the E: partition from my old disk and manually restore it on my new SSD drive?

4. When you say "You can't recreate theHP_Recovery Partition for Windows 8.1" do you mean this tool was available in Windows 7 and no longer available for Win 8.1 or is it for some other reason?

Thanks for your expert advice,

Alex