Fitting SSD to Laptop

I have a Lenovo R500 laptop into which I want to fit a SSD. I know you can do it by swapping out the CD drive for a HD caddy, but what I want to do is put the SSD in as the main drive and the existing HD into the caddy.

Dimensionally it looks like it will fit ok but are there any other drawbacks to doing it this way? I have already upgraded to Win 8/64 so don't need the reserve partition.

I will be fitting a Sandisk 128 Gb drive.

Any advice welcome.

 

David,

Can you post a screenshot of Disk Management?

 

I can't comment on your specific model, but usually it's better to do it like you wanted: Put the SSD in as the main drive and the HDD in the CD/DVD drive caddy. The reason is because the SATA connector for the main drive is usually a newer/faster generation than the one in the CD/DVD bay.

 

Thanks for the replies

Brian - here is the screenshot of the Lenovo

 

Hello,

I prefer to do a clean install to SSDs versus cloning from a HDD, but I've noticed on ThinkPads that cloning operations seem to work best if the new drive is inside the internal drive bay and the old drive is in a removable drive tray or attached via USB.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

David,

Thanks. Should be easy. Do you have imaging software or would you like some advice? I assume you would like to copy the Win8 partition to the SSD. Do you have a USB external HD? How much Free Space is in your C: drive?

 

Thanks for confirming that

 

Thanks Brian

Yes I will be doing that. Probably using AOEMI Backupper. I have an image on an USB drive. Don't know though if it can deal with different size partitions.

Won't be doing this till after Christmas - just preparing the ground.

 

What SSD do you plan on running? If its a Samsung you will get their software that will aid in the transfer.

Also I did the same thing. I run a 120Gb SSD in the main SATA bay. I then used an HD Caddy (This one) to put my 750Gb 7200RPM HD in the other DVD drive space. I was able to transfer the disc drive cover over to the caddy for an OEM finish.

I removed my disc drive as everything I could ever need (games, music, videos, movies, etc.) are all digital anyways.

 

Thanks for your reply. Sorry for the delay but my internet has been down due to cable fault.

I will probably buy a Sandisk. Not too bothered about transferring the system. I have Active@ but might just install fresh as there is not much on it at present.