*Price Drop* Crucial M4 128GB mSATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SSD) - CT128M4SSD3 $90 @ Buy.com, Amazon & Newegg

I'm not terribly knowledgeable about computers these days. I used to be an IT guy in a previous life, but I haven't kept up with the speed of technology. However, I actually work online and use my computer 10-12 hours a day. I have an Acer TimelineX that is a 13.3" screen and it weighs about 3lbs. There isn't an optical drive and there are no slots for cards.....so I'm guessing I'd have to take it apart and straight up swap the hard drive out of it and use it as an external drive (or not at all -- I have a brand new 500GB external drive that I got last Christmas that I've never used, so I could most important stuff there). Is this possible / easy enough for someone who hasn't taken apart a laptop before?

Like I said, back in the day, I was an IT guy - so I used to swap out RAM and hard drives and optical drives on desktops all the time about 10 years ago. But, like I said, I've never opened a laptop case.

How do I go about getting the operating system on the new drive? Do I just need to download a copy of the OS somewhere and then use my OS key from the hard drive I've got? Or is there a way to move it over from this HD to the new one?

Thanks for any help from anymore more knowledgeable than me. I really don't need anything for the holidays this year, but my family is pressing me for an idea. Since I work on my computer, faster performance (especially boot up and shut down times) sounds good enough and a drive like this is the right price point -- I'm just trying to determine whether or not I could do it and how difficult it will be.

Thanks!


Edit: I see that, contrary to what some guys say, size does matter here. How do I figure out what size is in my computer if I can replace it?

I'm not terribly knowledgeable about computers these days. I used to be an IT guy in a previous life, but I haven't kept up with the speed of technology. However, I actually work online and use my computer 10-12 hours a day. I have an Acer TimelineX that is a 13.3" screen and it weighs about 3lbs. There isn't an optical drive and there are no slots for cards.....so I'm guessing I'd have to take it apart and straight up swap the hard drive out of it and use it as an external drive (or not at all -- I have a brand new 500GB external drive that I got last Christmas that I've never used, so I could most important stuff there). Is this possible / easy enough for someone who hasn't taken apart a laptop before?

Like I said, back in the day, I was an IT guy - so I used to swap out RAM and hard drives and optical drives on desktops all the time about 10 years ago. But, like I said, I've never opened a laptop case.

How do I go about getting the operating system on the new drive? Do I just need to download a copy of the OS somewhere and then use my OS key from the hard drive I've got? Or is there a way to move it over from this HD to the new one?

Thanks for any help from anymore more knowledgeable than me. I really don't need anything for the holidays this year, but my family is pressing me for an idea. Since I work on my computer, faster performance (especially boot up and shut down times) sounds good enough and a drive like this is the right price point -- I'm just trying to determine whether or not I could do it and how difficult it will be.

Thanks!


Edit: I see that, contrary to what some guys say, size does matter here. How do I figure out what size is in my computer if I can replace it?

Cake!

Just youtube vids on your laptop to figure how to crack the sucker open. Get ssd wth installation software (most likely acronis) and just clone the old to the new. Will probably need to adjust partition size as it probably is smaller than hdd. A little planning and cleaning and saving data to external ahead of operation. No big deal. When clone, just click manual instead of automatic, and do it there.

If a mouthpiece like me who's never been in itee can do it, you can it.

Here's a guide I used. Works great. http://www.howtogeek.com/97242/ho...ate-drive/

EDIT: Crap that's for a desktop. Similar steps

Hmmm You don't need a lot of space for an SSD. I've been using a 64GB for nearly two years now and it's more than enough. HDD's are used for storage.

Depends, on my laptops I can get away with 64GB ssds as the boot drive but my main desktop has 240GB of SSD storage space and I'm constantly having to remove things to maintain free space. Mostly the problem is that modern games take up huge amounts of space so at any given time I can only have like 1/8th of my Steam library installed. Games benefit a lot from being on the SSD so I can't really offload them.
I don't really play games on my laptop so it's been fine with just a 64GB SSD as the boot drive. I've even gotten away with a 40GB ssd before though that's required a lot of careful file management lol.

Bought one from Amazon. It's still alive so Wiki needs to be edited (out of stock but still can place order).

Anyone know what I can sell my current 32gb mSATA for? It came with my laptop so I don't need it since I just bought this.

Bought one from Amazon. It's still alive so Wiki needs to be edited (out of stock but still can place order).

Anyone know what I can sell my current 32gb mSATA for? It came with my laptop so I don't need it since I just bought this.

could this work on a dell latitude 910? that old netbook?