Gadgets & Gizmos

Solid-state drives, or SSDs, are all the rage. Compared witha standard rotating-platter hard drive, they’re more shock-resistant, easier on your laptop battery, and faster at most operations. One caveat: Though prices are dropping, they still cost considerably more than standard hard-disk drives.
Here’s how to add one to your PC. We’ll use a laptop in this example, because portables require a few extra steps, but these instructions generally apply to desktops, as well. Before you upgrade, however, consider thesepoints to determine if an SSD is suitable:
Does your PC run Windows XP? If it does, you probably should not upgrade to an SSD. Though such drives can work with Windows XP, that operating system isn’t as well optimized for SSDs as Windows 7 or Vista. Windows 7 sup-ports the TRIM command, something that helpskeep SSD performance optimized.
Does your PC’s BIOS support SSDs? The BIOS of some older laptops won’t work properly with solid-state drives. Try doing a Web search for your PC model and “SSD compatible” to see if other users have run into upgrade issues.
Can your laptop be physically upgraded? Some older laptops don’t permit easy upgrading of their hard drives. This is especially true of certain MacBook and MacBook Pro models. In addition, you should make sure that upgrading will not void your warranty or require you to perform serious surgery on your laptop.
Do you want to reinstall Windows? you’re goingto have to put Windows on your new drive, which you can do by performing a clean install or by cloning your old hard drive onto your new one.
If you opt for a clean Windows install, simply back up your data, install Windows on the new drive, and then restore the data you backed up with a tool such as Windows Easy Transfer or laplink PCmover —just make sure that you have the right drivers. Although Windows 7 offers many drivers of its own for older hardware, if it doesn’t support a crucial piece of your PC, you might not be able to get online and download the remaining drivers after you start the installation process.
If you’ve resolved all of the issues mentioned above, you’re ready to swap out your old drive. For different laptops you’ll find varying ways of removing the existing hard drive—our Acer laptop had the drive under an easily removable panel that was held in place by a set of small Phillips-head screws. No screws held the drive in place once we took off the panel.The connector that attached the drive to the system looked WorldMagsfragile, however, so we took great care in slowly working it off, you’ll have to check your own laptop to see how the drive is connected. Some Dell notebooks have fixed connectors inside the laptop shell, so you can lift the back of the drive and slowly, gently pull it straight out. Other laptops screw the drive into the shell.
Whatever the arrangement, be very careful with this data and power connector: One broken drive connector or cable means that you’re facing an expensive repair bill. Our test laptop used a pair of rails to align the drive inside the laptop shell. If your laptop has similar rails, be careful—you must re-attach these parts in the correct orientation in order for the new drive to slip cleanly into the system. And of course, you need to be just as cautious when re-attaching the data and power connector as you were when you detached it.With the new SSD installed, we fired up the laptop. While we didn’t run exhaustive drive benchmarks, we did check boot times and shutdown times with a stopwatch. With the standard hard drive, the laptop booted in 54.59 seconds and shutdown in 17.94 seconds. With the SSD in place, it took 38.71 seconds to start up and 13 seconds to shut down.