Laptop SSD upgrade help me??

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

Hey guys!

So I'm looking at getting an Acer Aspire AS5738PG laptop, as below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAuSYhbrdLI

I'm also looking at slotting a OCZ vertex 120GB SSD into it and doing a clean install with Windows 7 Ultimate

The guy keeps banging on about the touchscreen and has a bit of craic on regarding the bluray player.

I am wondering, given the fact that acer will no doubt have installed software for the touchscreen and also software for the bluray player to the factory hard drive, if my ssd upgrade will make these touchscreen and bluray player redundant?

ie. will the bluray player and the touchscreen work after I have upgraded?

Thanks guys!

(sorry I didn't really know what category to put this into, I thought it best place in the category regarding hard drives and storage!)

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

By the way sorry for putting tigerdirect up. It was the only channel featuring my specific laptop, and timetolivecustoms is obv mainly a custom pc channel x

 

[sheroo]

If you get in touch with them they might offer an ssd upgrade and do it all for you?

Edit: Wouldn't do this for a virgin build.

If not you can ghost the drive and then just put the image on your new ssd, so all should look exactly the same.

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

If you get in touch with them they might offer an ssd upgrade and do it all for you? If not you can ghost the drive and then just put the image on your new ssd, so all should look exactly the same.

Ah I work at comet and it is a discontinued item so I am getting an exclusive employee deal for the laptop, so no possibility of them doing an ssd upgrade i'm afraid! hmmm ghosting? do tell me more

how do i approach such a task? and will windows 7 automatically enable TRIM because on my desktop i had to configure ahci before i installed windows 7 to the ssd, or will TRIM not actually matter that much?

x cheers pal! x

 

[S_I_N]

you should be able to find the drivers for all the gear in the lappy online so I would imagine a hdd to ssd swap shouldnt be to difficult

 

[sheroo]

OK, I'm going to back track after having thought about this a lot more. You should get a recovery disk with your new laptop which should have an image of the OS on it.

Do a clean install with that after setting ahci mode in the bios. Hopefullly all the drivers will be there, if not they should be on their website.

You could take an image using acronis, but as there are no programs or personal data on the laptop day one, then I would clean install. If you had loads of stuff it had taken you weeks or months to get just right then it might be worth imaging and messing around with trim and partition alignment and retrospectively setting ahci mode, but in this case I don't think it is.

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

I have since messaged ACER explaining the situation and am waiting for a response. Asked them if it was possible to send a CD with the drivers on. A bit cheeky but we will see how it goes

Checked their support and downloads page for the relevant drivers/applications but didn't see any drivers for the bluray player etc.

I'm not sure if they still ship recovery disks with laptops. Though with this one being discontinued and relatively old they may well have. I will by that time have a spare, legit copy of windows 7 ultimate hanging around so the OS won't be an issue.

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

I've done some scouting - looks like there is an applications and drivers CD bundled... this looks promising

 

[sheroo]

I've done some scouting - looks like there is an applications and drivers CD bundled... this looks promising

Cool

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

had a thought

is it possible to take the original drive out, stick it in this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467128473&pf_rd_i=468294

with the ssd, copy everything over.

Then refrain from putting the ssd into the laptop, power the laptop up and get into the BIOS, enable AHCI mode, power off.

Then put the ssd into the laptop and boot as normal. Will this workaround work?

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

or i could try this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8gW_ycdnas

 

[sheroo]

I've never used one of thos docs, but it might do the trick. There are some alignment issues that you have to watch out for with an ssd.

Here's a vid that shows how crucial do it, but they make sure that there is a 4k alignment. I think you also need to re-rate the drive so that windows recognises it as an ssd so that it will disable defrag and enable trim and stuff.

Everything I've read suggests that were possible its better to do a clean install.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vRCgNylkOo[/media]

 

[Grizzly]

A local IT company I did some work experience with use one of those docks to save data on nearly dead hard drives, so long as the destination drive is the same size or bigger as the old drive it works, they said it wouldn't work the other way round regardless of how much data was on the old drive as I'm guessing it replicates the drive bit for bit.

 

[S_I_N]

your best bet will always be (when installing to an ssd) doing a fresh install. You should be able to find the drivers for that laptop online somewhere that you can copy to a cd/dvd and install after windows. This way you know 100% that you have it all setup correctly. ACHI enabled and all thru bios prior to installing windows. Doing a file transfer from one disc to another that doesnt have ACHI enabled prior will most likely resort in some difficulties later.