Windows 10: Updating laptop....

All looks pretty straightforward thanks for the link.

Looking to spend around £50 - £75 so unless there's better choices and deals elsewhere Argos as usual have quite a lot on offer, also I think they refund you within a short period if unsatisfied though I'd have to check this first. I think they might even fit it as well so is it worth keeping the old drive just in case there's any problems later on ?

There's one with 2 terabytes (No:73) for £69.99 plus vat which looks ok but is this an SSD i.e. the better one of the two ?

Buy Hard drives at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Technology.

 

No, those are portable hard drives, which are connected to your computer by USB. The driver use 5200-5400rpm low power hard drives.

 

Like these (example)
MX300 275GB 2.5 SATA 6Gb/s SSD - CRUCIAL MEMORY | CPC

 

Thanks all new territory ! How much do you think would the MX300 275GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s SSD in the pic reduce the start up times by say from the current slow 50 - 60 secs ? Also does it make everything else much quicker as well ?

 

That SSD was just an example, there are countless others available.

YouTube video showing how to replace on the Lenovo:
lenovo G50 HDD - Bing video

'Everything else' is certainly much (as in light years) quicker. Programs open instantly, nothing seems to get bogged down etc.

Start up times in all honesty were always fairly good even with the traditional drive (it was a 7200rpm high performance one though).

In your case it would be interesting to try a 'clean install' of Windows which removes all the bloat, however I would also normally recommend anyone to make a disk image of their present set up first so that things can always be put back if you ran into trouble.

There are lots of videos around that show SDD vs HDD so you can see the differences.

The attached file (super low resolution to fit on here) shows my laptop when I had W8.1 and a traditional drive fitted. You'll probably think that seems fast and it shows start up, opening an email in Internet Explorer and arriving on a forum. The SSD is quicker still but where it really shines is in actually doing stuff.

 

That's impressive indeed thanks the videos making it much easier to follow. I take your point about doing a clean install and removing old bloat first, though I wouldn't dare do it myself as I'd have no idea what was happening then see what the situation is. Is it a long job ?

Then as I bought it from PC World last March for £299.99 and if it doesn't take too long to do rather than leaving it with them, as a first step I'd like to get them to do the clean install even though the warranty or whatever has run out then note any differences.

If it's still slow then to buy the one in your link....?

MX300 275GB 2.5 SATA 6Gb/s SSD - CRUCIAL MEMORY | CPC

Btw Is mine a mechanical one - an HDD ?

 

A clean install usually only takes around 20 to 40 minutes depending how fast your PC is.

This explains how its done in detail although in essence all you do is create a Windows 10 installation file on a plug in memory stick, set the PC to boot from that stick (which means it looks to that first and takes its instructions from there), and then proceed with the installation.

This shows it in detail:

Clean Install Windows 10 Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

A clean install formats and wipes the HDD and there is no going back once that happens. As long as you have access to another PC in case you needed to check or look something up then I would say you shouldn't have any major problems. Clean installing and formatting the drive means you lose everything that was ever installed. You can never get that stuff back, which most think is a bonus *Smile

 

Thanks all very useful information....

Obviously this means having to remove a lot of unwanted things for me like Cortana etc. etc. all over again which whilst a chore and if I've understood it all correctly should mean a lot faster boot ups, in my case say from roughly 60 secs down to what you showed in your clip 15 - 20 secs ?

Would it then be necessary to buy an SDD ?

 

There is nothing to manually remove, the format removes everything in seconds. When you install W10 again Cortana and all the other stuff that goes with W10 is already there but what you will have lost is any customisation. You are starting with a clean sheet... W10 and nothing else.

You would only know by trying a clean install as to whether that gave you the gains you seek.

 

Thanks for all your great help. Finally would it then not be necessary to buy an SDD any more.... ?

 

You would only know that by seeing whether a clean install resolved all your slowdowns, or at least made it all more acceptable.

To give you an idea I have a Dell laptop running W10 pro with an SSD and an older Acer laptop with a traditional drive, so not a like for like comparison by any means but the differences are startling.

The Dell fully boots in 11 seconds, the Acer around 1.5 to 2 minutes.
Opening something like LibreOffice takes a couple of seconds on the Dell, around 30 seconds or more on the Acer.
A full image backup takes 2.5 minutes on the Dell, around 35 minutes on the Acer (both are set up pretty much identically, and if anything the Acer will have less to back up).

And so it goes on...

Shutdown takes around 4 seconds on the Dell, anything up to 30 seconds or more on the Acer.

I do remember that fitting the SSD was the single biggest performance gain I have ever seen, forget extra RAM and tweaking things to improve speed. Everything was just lightning fast after going SSD.

I am sure anyone reading this who has also fitted an SSD will confirm what a massive difference it makes.

 

I can confirm this. It was the best investment I've ever made on any computer I have ever owned. The performance boost is HUGE.

 

Thanks I think I've got the picture now so will go for the SSD and see what happens, also it sounds the easiest route as I'm not too keen on the idea of a complete re-install. Still it's there in the background in case.

Again many thanks for all your great help as I'd had no idea to start with ! *Biggrin

 

If you go down the SSD route it means you can remove your present HDD and preserve the original installation. Assuming the SSD install goes to plan (hey, why wouldn't it *Smile) then you have a spare drive that you could put in a USB caddy to make an external drive for saving stuff to (and that would be just like those you buy at Argos).

As a first step I would ask yourself how much space you actually need.

Music and particularly videos are the big consumers. Windows itself doesn't occupy all that much room. I manage very nicely with a 256Gb drive and other than needing to cater for my rather extreme backup plans I could easily manage with a 128Gb drive.

For me 30Gb covers Windows and 100's of photos, quite a lot of specialised programs and files and 100's of PDF's. No videos though although I do have around 100 CD's ripped as Windows Media Audio (WMA) files.

 

I can confirm this(previous post from Mooly). For just normal office tasks like documents and other similar, a 128GB drive is enough. I have 128GB on one laptop, which is more than enough. On the other I have 500GB, but only because I am a programmer,so my disk space needs can be huge from time to time. All extra stuff I store on external drives.

In your case that 500GB original spinner would serve very well for this purpose, if you stick it in an USB enclosure. I did exactly this on my other laptop when I upgraded the 750GB HDD to a 500GB SSD. I also did exactly as described above, I just removed the original drive, and put in the ssd, then I clean installed Windows. Once my system was up and running I transferred documents from the original HDD via USB. At this point I did not remove the original content from my HDD. Once I was certain I had backed up all I wanted to keep, I wiped the whole original HDD. *Smile