Installing SSD on Pavilion dv 2146sd

[WillesPappa]

Hello.

I'm about to upgrade my old laptop with a Samsung 128gb SSD..

The old Hdd was replaced with the SSD and a Windows 7 clean install was attempted from USB

First off it started nagging about Filesystem not recogniced: gpt. Since i never had anything to do with gpt ever before i decided to do some reading on the subject. A nice friend offered to help out the situation thou. Without giving it another thought and probably against better knowing, i handed over the computer and went back to reading. My friend fired away and converted the disk from gpt to mbr in diskpart. The disk was now recogniced by the system and win 7 was migrated succesfully and my computer was returned to me. Everything was tra-la-la until i went on to review my new systemsetup in detail and then learned from my friend it was installed mbr since no UEFI-Boot was possible.

Well, during my reading about gpt i came to understand that the SSD should have been keept as gpt and then when in Windows certain software for cloning the system should have been used. in this case Samsung Data Migration would have been used. As i understand it, if "Data Migration" was used it wouldnt be a problem that the SSD was gpt and thus it would go on and migrate or clone my systemdisc to the SSD. Later when replaced as primary, my system would then start up in UEFI mode by itself and i get to go into boot setup to review settings? or is this a missunderstanding from my side?!

My friend states converting to MBR then install Windows was the only way since the Pavilion dv6 doesnt support UEFI thus not gpt either.

Some research and reading around suggests otherwise, that UEFI-mode is possible and i should go on and change the SSD back to gpt and go on with the data migration software in windows instead to be able to run my SSD at any resonable transferspeeds and allso being able to use all of the features to this disc, whatever they may be.

Best Regards Jj

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Yes, it is a misunderstanding on your part.

Your notebook cannot boot from a GPT formatted disk.

If you used the disk for storage only, you could format it in GPT.

You need to have a PC with a UEFI BIOS which yours does not have, in order for a disk to boot from a GPT partition.

There is no advantage to having a GPT-formatted disk unless it is greater than 2 TB in capacity.

Remember that your notebook's drive controller is only SATA II (3.0 GBPS), so you will never attain the advertised read/write speeds.