Best value SSD?

[21TonyK]

Any particular ones to look at or avoid?

Planning to upgrade the HDD on daughters laptop over Xmas and remembered seeing some damning reviews of Kingston?

Looking at 500GB or there abouts.

[21TonyK]

Am I right in thinking (apart from the form factor) mSATA has a higher transfer/R?W rate than a Samsung 7mm SSD?

[21TonyK]

Monty Python said:

How old is the laptop? If it's using the old ATA-150 interface then you won't see much benefit over a SSHD. I just put a Crucial MX300 in my old laptop and while there was an improvement it was nowhere near the improvement I got when I did the same upgrade to my desktop over SATA3.

3/4 years, Asus S200E

[21TonyK]

Monty Python said:

21TonyK said:

3/4 years, Asus S200E

In that case it's SATA3 so you should get a decent improvement (especially given the HD fitted as standard is a slow 5400rpm one). If you can't stretch to an SSD then the SSHD is an option (1TB for around £80).

Thanks for that. Looks like it will be a Crucial or Samsung, guess whatever is on Prime and cheapest at the time.

Last Q. Bearing in mind there is no CD/DVD on the machine I'm guessing I need a USB cable for the drive and some cloning software. Any recommendations on SW, just use a freebie off the web? I suspect I'll have to create a bootable memory stick with the SW on?

Cheers all

[21TonyK]

Matt100HP said:

You don't need to create a bootable USB stick, you can clone a drive whilst it's running Windows. Just attach the SSD to the laptop, open your software of choice and clone the current OS HDD to the SSD.

Even simpler then. Last time I cloned drives I was replacing 150+ desktops back in 1999/2000!

[21TonyK]

Thanks all, just ordered a Crucial MX300 525 with cable for £120 as shes home tonight and I can sort it out in the morning if it arrives on time.

Was thinking about AOMEI Partition Assistant, any issues anyone knows of?

Also, I assume I can pick up a cheap external case for a 2.5" drive and put the old one in it to backup the SSD by cloning every couple of weeks. She already keeps backups of work on my Amazon drive.

[21TonyK]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Upgraded to the Crucial and its made a significant difference as expected. Not sure if it will be enough for what she wants but if not it will make a very good laptop for sons O and A levels.

The Acronis SW did the job but went into an infinite boot/reboot on the original drive until I took it out and just tried the cloned SSD which as fine. Old drive now awaiting an external enclosure ^^^^^ as a backup.