Windows 8 vs SSD upgrade

[Pelicanjoe]

I'm on a windows 7 Sage V7. It is getting a little slow so I'm thinking of one of two things. Option 1 ->Buy a new Windows 8.1 box and port everything to that. Option 2 -> Buy an SSD drive and convert only my C drive to SSD, leaving my media drives as HDD.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Joe

[KeithAbbott]

You need to be careful how you "convert" from a hard drive to a SSD. Windows 7 actually installs differently if it determines that it is being installed to a SSD. Some of the software that is available to move a hard drive to SSD can configure Windows properly as a part of the move, but not all of the software does.

[SWKerr]

At some level it depends on the specs of your current machine.
But...you will be amazed at how much better your PC will run off a SSD boot drive. YOu can get a 128GB for only about $60 now so I would really try that first. A new PC will be a lot more.

I would disconnect the old drive and install a clean copy of Win7. Download all the updates and install your programs to the PC and make sure everything works before connecting your old drive which I assume you will now use as a data drive.

Also: good idea to make sure ally your important documents are on a could drive like Google drive just in case something very bad happens. I also use the Goolge music service to backup my music collection as well as just having access to everything from everywhere. Apple and Amazon have something similar as well. Video files still take up too much space for this kind of cloud backup but really with all the options now for online content you could probably find it all again anyway.

And spending an extra $100 on a 3TB hard drive is really not a bad idea as well. it will likely be faster\cooler and more energy efficient than your old drive and you can use the old one for Backups.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

You need to be careful how you "convert" from a hard drive to a SSD. Windows 7 actually installs differently if it determines that it is being installed to a SSD. Some of the software that is available to move a hard drive to SSD can configure Windows properly as a part of the move, but not all of the software does.

It's not all that difficult, though.

To the OP: Read this guide to get an idea. If you don't need to do any partition resizing/moving, then do some searching for the required registry (and, possibly, BIOS) tweak.

[Pelicanjoe]

To close this off. I ended up going with the SSD upgrade. Bought a 250 GB Crucial MX-100. Like a new machine! Very nice! I think this was definitely a big bang for the buck! Crucial gives you a copy of Total Home Image 2014 which you can do a partial clone. The SSD guide that Skirge01 posted helped quite a bit with optimization.

I was initially hesitent about Crucial because I have a MX-500 in my laptop (nothing special - did not speed up at all). But the MX-100... Wow! Alot faster!