Migrating system to new SSD

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to get an Intel 510 120GB SSD to replace my 750GB in an attempt to improve performance but more importantly battery life.

I'd like to know two things before I make the purchase:
(1) How much extra battery life does the Intel 510 SSD provide? My current battery life is realistically around 3-3.5 hours which is quite disappointing...
(2) I have around 90GBs of programs, files, windows7 on my 750GB. How should I migrate everything? The only worry is windows7 license not accepting the new SSD...

Thanks for the support!

EDIT: I might also consider Intel 320 120GB SSD since it seems to have lower power consumption and better reviews.

 

Umm, I would say you'd at least get 4-5 hours battery life with maxed power saving features. And that 120gb ssd would probably have ~110gb or less usable space. You can either clone or do a clean install, both has their drawbacks. I read that cloning the drive doesn't align the partitions or whatever right when cloning. A clean install would be the safe way, but would take a lot of work. If you're okay with cloning, you can use acronis. Make a system recovery cd within acronis. Back up your current system image to a spare external hdd. Swap out your stock drive with the new ssd, connect the external hdd that has your system image copied to it. Boot the acronis recovery cd and clone it. Or the easier way to clone is to buy a sata to usb data and power cable from ebay for cheap, connect your ssd to your m14x, and clone that way. Won't need to make a boot cd.

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-IDE-SATA-S-...707?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45fc23276b

That's the sata data/power connector to plug your ssd into if you choose the second way. Windows will read the drive like a usb drive. And when the cloning is done, you can keep the sata power cable and format your old stock drive and use it as an external.

 

@niko: thanks for your quick response, currently my power settings are toned down to: alienfx (off), cpu (50% max), brightness (one notch above minimum). Battery life is around 3hours with light usage (office, internet, youtube, some photoshop). So you reckon the SSD will raise that to max 5hours?

Also with Acronis, will windows activation key be preserved?

 

Well 5 hours max would be reasonable on the high end, probably 4.5 average. Though the sandy bridge processor does draw and lot of power, so it wont be too high of a increase, but your boot up and other tasks will be much faster. And everything will be preserved when you clone, im pretty sure. If in any way you lose your windows key, look under your laptop and it should be on the sticker, it's also in the system information menu. I'd write it down just to be safe. And if it's ever lost, you can just activate it with that.