Kingston SSDNow V Series Notebook Upgrade Kit & Installation Guide Linus Tech Tips
Kingston SSDNow V Series Notebook Upgrade Kit & Installation Guide Linus Tech Tips
2010-07-07
so I've been promising to do a video
about this for a while maybe I haven't
been promising the viewers but I've
certainly been promising Kingston
so I unboxed their notebook upgrade kit
with the 128 gigabyte SSD now these
series drive quite a while back and so
what I'm actually gonna do now is I'm
going to upgrade a notebook with it so
this is my ghetto-fabulous notebook it's
a little on the old side it's got a 70
900 GT mobile in it now I'm in my
pajamas now you can totally see that oh
well whatever it's YouTube so it's got a
dual core 2.0 gigahertz processor in it
it's about 4 gigs of RAM I don't know if
I already said the GPU I got distracted
by the pajama thing 7900 GT so it's a
little on the older side but it's still
perfectly functional looks like I've
gone and forgotten my screwdriver so I
guess I'll just go get my backpack here
which contains all of the tools that I
need for upgrading a notebook all right
so that's the first thing you'll need
yes checklist so notebook check SSD
check screwdriver uncheck all there's
the hard drive boost I've been looking
for that ok I found it also a spoon some
business cards for NCIX where I work and
another spoon for whatever reason this
is getting pretty personal okay there we
go
Philips head screwdriver okay so the
first thing we're gonna do is locate
wherever it is that we need to open up
to get at the hard drive so it fits
anywhere standard two and a half inch
hard drive does so we're just gonna go
ahead and start opening up the case of
this notebook and then the parts of the
process that are gonna be sort of more
difficult are the ones where we're
actually going to transfer all of the
data for my existing hard drive which I
believe is a Western Digital Scorpio of
some sort and we will take all of that
data transfer it over to the SSD and
then in theory the whole upgrade is
completely seamless and besides my
computer being faster I would never
notice any difference gotta adjust my
camera here I've had a few people ask me
how I mount the camera here and rather
than answer that question I'm going to
make that one of the mysteries like who
is the camera man
how does Linus hold the camera while he
is working with both of his hands and
the answer is not a hat contrary to what
some of you may believe it is not a hat
okay so here we go we just pry it up
right there hopefully I don't lose any
screws because that would be pretty much
a disaster I don't have like replacement
screws for my laptop okay here we go so
the inside of the laptop see my fans
pretty dirty let's just blow on that I
got some RAM some Buffalo RAM I got my
wireless card
there's the GPU it's got like these huge
heat sinks on okay let's get to the oh
wow my well that's kind of neat so the
way this the way the harddrive mounts in
my system you can see it is a SATA hard
drive but it looks like the screws that
we took off here are actually the ones
that are holding the hard drive in so it
was that simple so here we go ah that's
interesting there's some kind of like
RMA notes on this I don't remember
anything about that looks like it
doesn't format well the drive works fine
for me
it's been working for months so what we
do now is you can see that this
particular notebook uses the bottom
mounting holes so you've got a couple of
different options for notebook
manufacturers for mounting the hard
drive you can either use the side holes
which are here or you can use the bottom
one so this one as I said three seconds
ago uses the bottom one so just take off
all these screws and that was it we have
removed the hard drive so the next step
is going to be the SSD kit so I'm just
gonna take that out of there you know
once again move that hope I don't lose
any screws so notebook upgrade kit
inside here you will find everything you
need to upgrade so here is the drive
cloning software that's gonna be key
next we have the SSD itself so why don't
we go ahead and do the SSD installation
process here so I'm just gonna sort of
figure out how I need to orient this so
it needs to go in this way so it uses
all the same standard mounting holes
that a hard drive does you get a lot of
questions from people about like how
SSDs work compared to hard drives like
do you need to configure anything in the
BIOS or do you need to you know in
reinstall windows or there's all kinds
of different questions like is my system
compatible with an SSD and the answer is
if your computer works with a hard drive
it pretty much works with an SSD an SSD
doesn't appear any different to the
system than a hard drive does the only
difference is that it just gets the data
for it a lot faster so if anything your
system will be happier with you for
giving it an SSD to work with ok so
there we go
standard SATA interface so just go ahead
and plug that in right there slide that
on in there hopefully that goes breaking
anything yeah there we go
ok so that was pretty straightforward
and the next thing we're gonna do is
we're gonna take my old drive and we're
gonna use the included drive enclosure
so we're gonna use the included drive
enclosure right here and we are going to
install this old
so I'm gonna just unlock this so that I
can actually go ahead and again standard
say the interface you just slide that
right in there okay it is now officially
installed hey slide that back all right
so now you just need a USB cable I think
I got a spare one anyway so I don't
really need to unpack that but you can
never have enough USB cable so that's
one of the rules of life or at least
tech life anyway because there's always
going to be a situation where you're
running all over the place looking for
one and you can't find it okay all right
he's interested in the computer hi
Rumble okay please don't step on the
inside of my computer notice he's
stepping on my new SSD maybe it will be
infused with cap strength and agility
now and if that doesn't happen then
hopefully at least it's not ruined all
right so we're gonna close up the laptop
that was it
that's how easy it is to change the hard
drive in a laptop
I mean maybe yours is a little bit
tougher but usually you got like a
diagram on the outside of the casing
that shows you where to access the hard
drive ah
stupid cat no no no no okay you get down
go down over there thank you
he went after one of the screws that I
dropped because he heard the sound of it
falling and he decided that that was a
good thing to hunt and probably eat if
I'd let him have it they eat bugs you
know I actually really don't like bugs
this is something I've never mentioned
on my video blog before I hate bugs so I
found a spider in my bathtub the other
day and rather than deal with it myself
oh thank you for helping me rather than
deal with it myself I decided that I
just sick the cat on it so it took him
about I don't know 20 seconds to figure
out what to do with the spider and to
dispatch it for me okay good one
not anything
okay these crews are not going in for
some reason hopefully that will be
remedied soon go ahead and screw these
in okay so once we're done this what I'm
gonna do is I'm going to use the USB
cable to access the old hard drive once
I turn the system on and then I'm gonna
use the included cloning software that
Kingston well includes and I'm going to
transfer all of the data what I'm gonna
hope now something that I totally didn't
think of already is that take it off the
computer cat there we go what I'm gonna
hope now is that I don't have too much
data on that hard drive to actually
transfer it to a 128 gig SSD because
that's one of the big disadvantages that
you run into with SSDs is that there
just isn't as much storage space on them
as a comparable hard drive so here we go
plug that in oh great my batteries not
charged on my laptop okay I'll be back
in a moment
laptops plugged in there so we're just
gonna start it up might we I mean me
here my pajamas and I've plugged in the
two and a half inch drive here oh and I
what I forgotten to do is open up the
optical Bay here and then put in the SSD
hard drive cloning software so just like
that and hopefully I have this
configured to boot to disk first that is
my
hold on for that starting a Cronus
loader yeah okay I brought nevermind I
didn't bring anything okay when a
protist room is HD so we just clicked
that thought it was simple something
that you might have to do if your laptop
is not already configured to boot from
the optical drive is that you'll have to
go into the BIOS and just set your
optical drive as the next boot device so
it may not be quite this simple for you
but it should be pretty similar
something else I thought about
installing in my laptop is the momentous
XT because this is a pretty good
compromise between hard drive and SSD
but it's I mean if you got an SSD it's
pretty much the best way to go so I see
now that my mystery of how I mount my
camera here has now been officially
revealed I just have a little tripod
that's on my chest so I can kind of
adjust the angle like this now you can't
see any more hot okay so what we're
gonna do is we're gonna click clone disk
we're going to click Next to continue
we're gonna hope that I don't have don't
have too much data on here so Manuel I
don't know why but I've had more success
with Manuel in the past so the source
old disk is going to be on the USB
interface here it's going to be the for
some reason oh yeah yeah yeah Kingston
hard drive enclosure so the click Next
and then the destination new disk is
going to be the 128 gig kingston SSD
next the destination drive contains some
partitions me i'll go ahead and delete
those partitions there shouldn't be
anything on there that I need choose
whether you want to keep the data no I
want to destroy that data go ahead and
click Next
the more choose data destroying
parameters I'll just do it quickly oh
who cares about this okay select the
data moving method should be
proportional so proportional what that
does is it keeps the original yeah it
scales the original partition so if I
have a 320 gig and I only have a hundred
gigs of data or if I'm transferring it
to a new drive that's 128 gigs and I
have 80 gigs of data it'll just make it
instead of a 320 gig with 80 gigs of
data it'll make it a 128
getting partition with 80 gigs of data
so proportional is definitely the way I
want to go here and then I click Next
and then in theory this is gonna work
really well and when I turn the camera
back on I'll be showing you how I'm
glued it up to my laptop with my new SSD
well after a fair bit of waiting
actually it looks like there's a this
copy of a Cronus is a little bit
different from the one that I've used in
the past so you can see it compares what
the partitions are gonna look like
before and after cloning so go ahead and
press next again so click proceed to
start aha this is what I was expecting
to happen when I press next last time so
I'll be back shortly it is now the
following morning and I have to confess
I was a little surprised at how long it
Cronus took to to clone the drives
because the version that I normally use
only takes about 20-25 minutes my gem
normally using SSDs because most of the
times I've done cloning is like for my
for my SSD comparison or whatever else
but either way here we are we can keep
going with this project the whole thing
probably took I mean I it was had been
running for two to two and a half hours
by the time I went to bed and then it
was it was showing it was maybe like 40
to 50 percent done so I'm guessing the
whole thing took 4 plus hours anyway
we're done now so we'll go ahead and
exit Acronis
and then once that's exited I guess we
can just open up the disk drive here and
so the hope oh wait we're going to shut
it down okay so we unplug the old hard
drive which is in this enclosure we turn
on the computer and then I'm just gonna
open up the disk drive here so I make
sure it doesn't boot to that and in
theory it's gonna boot up to the SSD so
let's see how this goes I'll let you
guys have this experience with me where
we find out if this worked
there's my cat he's a morning person
he's fighting with the twist I where he
was and then I turned around so now he
stops waiting up Windows XP something to
bear in mind is if you're running
Windows XP it's probably not ideal to
use a cloning utility I mean it'll work
for the time being but you're not going
to get the best performance because it's
quite likely that your partitions are
going to be unaligned or misaligned or
however that would work so I'm not going
to show you guys my password if that's
all the same to you but there we go
so that was it it those are my Linux
Linux distros
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