HELP Upgrading HDD to SSD

Im going try upgrade my HDD to SSD, and i want to know if this Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) will fit/work on my laptop.
I have M14x R1 with A03 bios, and the 500GB HDD it came with.

 

It will fit but this drive having a lot issue on my m14x-r2 , it randomly disappear from bios , need to restart several times to get it boot on , end up refund it.

 

OCZ had their day and is now flooding the market with crap SSDs. I think their upper-tier SSDs are probably OK, esp now that the Sandforce issues are "fixed", but you're still buying from OCZ. Seems like a sinking ship to me. In all fairness, my original 60GB Vertex IIs never gave me trouble once they had been updated, but it took some time for the update to finally release:[

 

what is a good SSD for my r1 m14x?

 

probably samsung 830. i've upgraded and for 6 months not one small problem. if i'm not wrong even alienware puts those in if you congfigure with ssd on the site.

 

I second this. Been using the 830 for a while with no issues

 

Same here! I think that's the best one to go in my personal opinion.

 

I'm a very satisfied 830 User too.
I highly recommend this SSD!:thumbsup:

 

I installed a 256gb 830 msata drive and it runs great, very fast compared to the normal drive.

 

Where did you get that?

Go for the Samsung!

 

I buy and sell Dell computers and it, erm, fell out of a XPS 8500

 

Well, that's a nice find. Have fun Can't wait for those to be available for retail.

 

samsung 830 or intel 520 series.

 

Samsung 830 is, in my opinion, the best SSD for the 14x R1. I have only experienced one problem and that was due to adding a hard drive in the optical bay slot.

 

I have been using the corsair force GT 120gb you can find them for real cheap now. Absolutely amazing drives. Since you have the R1 You will also have to update your BIOS to Version 8.

You might also want to watch this vid for the tear down if you are going to install the SSD.

Alienware m14x SSD Install Guide - YouTube

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ll-secondary-hard-drive-your-m14x-w-pics.html
I used this guide... pretty basic stuff - just be careful !

 

I'm rockin the OCZ VertexIII for over a year now? 18 months?? And I love it. Never had any issues, and I use a Samsung 1TB as my data drive. I get full sata6 speeds and love every minute of it!

 

Classic mixup.

 

For those of you that bought the Samsung 830, can you give some guidance? Looks like MicroCenter has a sale right now but there are two of them and I can't distinguish which one works for the M14x. Is there one for a desktop and one for the laptop form factor?

This one for $189
Samsung 830 Series MZ-7PC256D/AM 256GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive SSD) Desktop Kit with 3-core MCX Controller MZ-7PC256D/AM - Micro Center

And this one for $169
Samsung 830 Series MZ-7PC256B/WW 256GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive SSD) with 3-core MCX Controller MZ-7PC256B/WW - Micro Center

Do either of these work? Seems like a pretty good sale.
Thanks.
joey

 

That one should work.

The difference between the two is what's included. The cheaper one is just the drive. The more expensive one comes with:

Solid State Drive, 2.5" to 3.5" Adapter, SATA Cable, Power Connector, Screws, Software, Manual, Norton Ghost

 

So you're saying the cheaper one should work for the M14x?...I don't need anything else like the SATA cable or the power connector? It doesn't say it's SATA III though.
Thanks for your thoughts.
joey

 

I know for a fact that this drive works, I replaced my hard drive with an SSD 830 series from samsung (512gb). And yes, the plain SSD is enough, no cable or connector needed. My drive runs on SATA III, and with the one you mentioned, you should be fine.

 

The one for $169:

The title states SATA 6.0 Gb/s which is SATA3.

 

Thanks for the post to you and Mastaa. I picked up this drive on Friday from MicroCenter for $169 + tax. Awesome deal. I hooked it up with a SATA to USB connector, and used Acronis to clone the drive. It took about 10 minutes and it was done. Then I swapped the HDD out and installed the SSD. Fired it up and it was flawless. I was running A04 firmware so there was nothing to reset on the BIOS.

With the HDD a fresh boot loaded Win7 in 1:45 min. With this drive it booted Win7 in 27 sec (27 sec is fast but I was realy hoping it would load even faster...any suggestion on making it even faster?). What a huge difference in how fast it loads all programs. Most everything loads within a second.

Thanks everyone for the help.
joey

 

27 seconds does seem like to a lot. From when to when are you measuring?
1:45 seems like a long time. Sounds like you may have to stuff bogging down your load times and then the clone just copied the bogging stuff over which slowed the ssd load down.

If you can do it, I would do a clean install of Windows on the SSD and see the difference.

Is your BIOS set to RAID or AHCI?
Maybe run CDM/ATTO/AS SSD and see what read/write speeds you are getting.

 

I'm counting from the time I hit the "on" button to the last program loads is 27 s. How fast does your machine load? It doesn't seem like coming out of hibernation is any faster.

I did a clean install. After, I cloned it, I used my Acronis to reload an image I did after a clean Win7 install and reloaded the latest drivers. With no spam or spy ware on my machine, I'm still getting 27 s.

My BIOS is A04 and is running AHCI now.

What is CDM/ATTO/AS...is that the CD Magician software that came with the SSD? I did do the Optimizations but not sure what I was doing though. Is there something specific to set it at?

My specs are:
M14x R1
i7-2630QM
BIOS A04 set to AHCI
8 GB (factory installed RAM, free upgrade, don't know manuf.)
Samsung 830 256 GB SSD
Running Win7 SP1

Thanks.
joey

 

Maybe try RAID in bios.

CDM= Crystal Disk Mark
ATTO and AS SSD are other drive benchmarking tools to measure drive read/write speed.

I would be curious to see what your speed is from the clean install before you reloaded the image.