Converting from a standard HD to SSD

[Max]

My current Seasonic 500 G  HD is fine& dandy for now but is 4 yrs old. I'm considering a SSD, mainly for faster Win 7 boots. What do I need to know? 

[Spikes]

Well...SSDs are great. Are you going to install Windows fresh? You won't see any in-game performance boosts in particular, but games and apps will load faster so long as it resides on the SSD and not on a storage drive (ie if you make your 500GB into a storage drive, which is recommended for backups, movies/music, and lesser played games.

[delta7]

Been a while since i set mine up, but if I remember correctly the sata configuration has to be set to AHCI for ssds. Don't know how old your motherboard is, but some of the older ones defaulted to IDE.

[Bizman]

Max, your question is confusing: You tell that your Power Supply is 4 years old and that you want a Solid State Disk. They're not related other than that the PSU gives power to the SSD which is not much compared to other components.

Other than that, the pros and cons of an SSD have been mentioned in the two previous posts above. Faster boot and load time but no extra FPS in games. And checking that the BIOS setting is AHCI. A fresh install is always recommended but you can also clone the contents of your current HDD to an SSD if there's enough space.

[wrench]

Bizman there's a chance he might have meant to say Seagate instead of Seasonic. 

[Bizman]

Bizman there's a chance he might have meant to say Seagate instead of Seasonic. 

That's what I thought, too, but Seasonic has a G series as well. Now that I'm not in such a hurry as I was in the morning before going to work I noticed that the search results for "Seasonic 500 G  HD" weren't accurate, not including all of the phrases. So with hindsight it seems more possible that the description had several typos: Seagate 500 GB HDD would be the correct spelling in that case which also would make more sense. Thanks. 

[Max]

Yup I goofed...Seasonic is my power supply; Seagate BarraCuda is my HD 

[Bizman]

Both start with Sea so it's no wonder that some less computer savvy people easily mix the names. Some can't even read them, I've had a customer whose operating system was "Winsock" not to mention the numerous ones having "Abode" Reader on their computer. It's not about poor education either, most of them work in offices reading and writing all day long. Strange names just can be tricky - what does "seasonic" mean, after all? Sea-gate has a meaning but what has access to sea to do with computer components?

Anyhow, you've got the answer about getting an SSD or not and the rest is just about splitting hair. Which I don't have...

[Shuffler]

ROTFLMAO

[Denniss]

Ensure your SATA controller supports and operates with AHCI mode
Get a SSD from a good brand, preferably those using their own memory chips (Samsung, Crucial, WD/Sandisk).
Clone your old HDD to your new SSD - most SSDs are shiped with cloning software or a code for download.
500GB SSD is a good size or a combination of 250GB SSD + 1-2TB HDD

[Mister Fork]

 Most SSD hard drive’s come with software that will do the transferred from the old hard drive to your new solid-state. My seagate did.

[Bizman]

Most SSD hard drive’s come with software that will do the transferred from the old hard drive to your new solid-state. My seagate did.

Those that don't can use the software of the HDD manufacturer or third party software. In case of the former it's sufficient that either the old or the new one is of that brand. Both Seagate and WD use Acronis as well as Kingston.