What ssd should I get for my Hp Pavilion dv7t-3000

[chevyavalanche]

Hi, 

Want to upgrade to a SSD drive for my DV7T-3000 laptop. Looking for same size as current spinning HD (500GB). Any recommendations appreciated.  I assume any 2.5 x 7.0 mm SSD will work or is that not a safe assumption?

Also what would be easiest way to do this? Should I just add as the second drive in second bay and then transfer license over from current Win 10 HD during clean install process? Is cloning an option?

End result that I want is to have SSD as boot drive and have original HD as secondary storage drive.  Thanks.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Any 2.5 inch SATA SSD should be fine. Since the DV7 has two hard drive bays it is very easy to clone one disk to the other. Assuming you have mounting hardware for the second bay install your clean SSD in the second bay. Boot from a cloning app bootable disk and clone the old hdd to the new SSD. Then remove the HDD and swap the SSD into primary position. Macrium Reflect Free works well for this. 

[erico]

You can use a 2.5" SATA-3 (NGFF) V-NAND TLC notebook SSD.

https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/hp---compaq/pavilion-dv7t-3000-cto

[chevyavalanche]

Thanks Huffer,

When original HDD is put in second bay, does it just act like storage at that point? That's what I would like to do if that's possible.

[Huffer]

Yes it will just act as storage. You do want to wipe off the Windows system files. Not good to have more than one bootable disk in the laptop at the same time. 

[chevyavalanche]

Thanks again Huffer,

I've ordered the ssd and cable and will use the Macrium s/w. Not knowing much about cloning nor this s/w, will Macrium go through a formatting process first to set to set drive to NTFS or will it just strictly clone the other drive? What I'm getting at is I'm only consuming 1/3 of the current drive space but when I clone the new drive, will all of that extra space be available just like current drive? Current drive has 150GB consumed out of 500GB....so I assume the new drive will be just like it. Also, I'm cloning a 500GB to a 500GB ssd so I hope the s/w doesn't gig me on not having enough space since new drive is same size and not larger than current drive.

Just trying to make sure I do what needs to be done in the correct order so I don't have to go back and do everything over again.

[Huffer]

500 gig to 500 gig makes the process pretty fool-proof. You will wind up with an exact copy with same sized partitions. Yes Macrium will let you prep the target disk first. As you say odds are it is NTFS formatted and the partition table is gpt. If you need specific help post back and we can walk you through screenshots. Macrium is all graphical interface no command line and very intuitive. Install the Macrium and make the "rescue media" which is a bootable flash drive with Macrium software on it. Use the rescue media to do the clone. 

[chevyavalanche]

Huffer,

So I assume you want me to boot from USB which means I need to change BIOS boot options. As I look at them, my options are CD-Rom, Floppy Boot, Internal Network Adapter Boot....No USB Boot option. So how do I set laptop to boot from USB when there's no USB boot option? It's amazing to me that Floppy Boot is even an option when there's no floppy drive installed. I do have a CD-DVD reader/writer installed.

[Huffer]

You will not have the usb boot option until a bootable usb thumb drive is inserted. I also believe Macrium will let you burn a bootable CD/DVD. The floppy is for external usb floppy. Turn off computer, turn on and quickly tap F9 I believe for boot options and your bootable thumb drive should be there. There is a chance you may need to enable usb boot in the BIOS settings first but not usually. 

[chevyavalanche]

Huffer,

Ok, got it to work and it boots off of USB,  SSD arrives tomorrow along with cable so all I have to do after it boots from USB is select 'Clone this disk' and I'm off and running correct? Any hidden gotchas?