Adding SSD to Notebook

[rheg915]

Hi,

I have a HP Pavilion DV6 Notebook. I am thinking of adding a SSD hard drive in the main bay and changing the storage drive into the DVD drive. The drive right now is a 640GB, 7200 RPM, SATA 3GB.

First, is it worth to change? Second, if it is worth it, what size to change to? Right now I am using about 100GB total. 3rd, any recomendations?

Thanks.

Comp. Specs.

CPU I5-2410M 2.3 GHZ
GPU Raedon 6770M
RAM 6GB

 

[geofelt]

A SSD is most definitely worth it.

If you are using 100gb, I would not try to use a 120gb ssd.
Prices are down, so I would look at a 240gb ssd and put the storage drive in a external usb enclosure if you need to.

I have made this change to several laptops.
A clone utility will work, and Intel provides a good one if you use one of their drives.

One thing to check is the dimension of the space in the laptop. Sime ultrabooks can only take a 7mm drive like the samsungs, and not the intel 9.2mm drives. Use google to find user experiences in doing this, and perhaps the repair manual for the laptop.

Mostly, thoiugh, I have simply removed the old drive and reinstalled a fresh os on the ssd.
That way, I lose nothing if anything goes wrong. It is also a good way to get rid of useless apps that get installed by the vendor.

 

[popatim]

Only you can decide if its worth it or not.
Since your moving the 640 into the dvd drive bay you will have ample room so even a 60-ish Gb SSD would be enough for windows and some apps. I would recommend at least a 120gb and operate in a dual boot mode with the HDD for when the SSD craps out. SSD's do not have the reliabilityof HDD's.
I've had very good luck with Samsung SSD's.

 

[geofelt]

Only you can decide if its worth it or not.
Since your moving the 640 into the dvd drive bay you will have ample room so even a 60-ish Gb SSD would be enough for windows and some apps. I would recommend at least a 120gb and operate in a dual boot mode with the HDD for when the SSD craps out. SSD's do not have the reliabilityof HDD's.
I've had very good luck with Samsung SSD's.

For the most part, the reliability of modern DDS's is comparable to hard drives.
Here is one report on return rates for hard drives The better ones are in the 1.5-1.7% range:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-6/components-returns-rates-7.html
A report for SSD's shows 0.5-1% for the better ones.
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
Not exactly scientific, but with no moving parts reliability of SSD's makes sense to me.

And... you are right ONLY the OP can determine worth.
But for the half dozen laptops I have converted, the performance improvement was magical.