I recommend looking at Intel (520 and 330 series), Corsair (not sure about their current lineup, but they do make good drives), Samsung (840/830) and Kingston (HyperX I think).
As for size, only you know your needs, but I would recommend either a 120 Gig or a 240 Gig drive. The drives smaller than 120 GB are usually not much cheaper, so price/size is quite a bit worse on those. And as long as you don't need massive storage, something larger than 240 rarely makes sense since it's quite expensive.
Of course you can still use your old drive for data. I'm assuming you're using Windows? What you need to do is:
- Install your SSD, leave your old HDD untouched
- Boot from install medium and install new OS on SSD (make sure you don't accidentally overwrite your HDD!).
- Configure BIOS to boot from SSD (there's usually an option called something like "Boot Drive Order" or something similar. Put your new SSD in first place on that list).
- Boot into Windows, and you should have two drives. The operating system drive (C: ) should be your new SSD, and the next drive (D: should be your old disk.
- Clean up your old disk (the old OS is still installed on that, as are all your old programs and such). Ideally, you'll probably want to temporarily transfer your data to a third drive (or if there's enough room, to the SSD), format the old HDD and copy the data back.
- This assumes: That you are using only two drives (your current HDD and your new SSD) and that you'll have all the proper rights to access the data on your old HDD.
Regarding the
access rights: I haven't used Windows in a long time, so something might have changed in that regard. It might be possible that the OS you've installed on the new SSD won't get access to the data on the old HDD because it does not have the proper rights. But somebody else will have to clarify that, I'm not enough up to speed anymore.
But the rest of my points should work as intended I think (it doesn't contain every single detail of course, but the most important points).
