Need an advice about upgrading S3-391 to SSD

Hello

I'm planning to upgrade my wife's S3-391 to SSD drive (it has the mSATA/HDD combo for now). I chose Samsung 850 EVO 256GB SSD drive. I'm planning to use Samsung's Data Migration Software to migrate the OS (already upgraded to Win10) to SSD and than simply switch the SATA for the SSD.

I checked couple of previous threads

http://community.acer.com/t5/2014-Archives/How-to-recover-an-S3-391-to-a-new-SSD-drive/td-p/238490

http://community.acer.com/t5/Legacy-Laptops-and-Netbooks/Replacing-HDD-to-SSD-on-my-acer-aspire-s3-391/m-p/329377/

...and it seems to me that I have to remove the mSATA drive in order to make SSD boot. Can someone confirm it to me?

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/taking-apart-acer-aspire-s3-391-6497/

Also, did anyone tried to upgrade the mSATA drive only to model with bigger capacity and completely ditch 2.5" drive? Are there any real benefits (maybe less weight)?

Many thanks.

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padgett

I recently changed the disk on one machine succesfully.

Note: the new disk must be larger than your old C: drive plus any recovery drives. (shrink first if needed)

1) Create a recovery flash drive (win 10 wants a 16gb drive)

2) Take a system image on an external drive. This will be the same size as your C: drive plus any recovery drives.

3) Install new disk

4) Boot from Recovery Drive and select restore from system image. Image you just took should appear in the menu. Select.

5) Once recovery completes you should have your old system on the new drive.

ps the location of the system image routine is under "File History" in Win 10.

longo213

Well, not really what I asked for. I know how to move the OS to the SSD - with or without any migration software.

And you are mistaken, you DON'T need to use bigger SSD as your original drive, nor you need to trasfer recovery partitions (why?).

Not to mention that Samsung Data Migration Software is quite amazing when moving to the new storage solution (just read the manual in PDF, you'll see)

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html

What I asked is if I need to remove the mSATA drive - I'm okay with that, just wanted to know if using two SSD drives is still causing issues, based on what I've read on archived threads on this forum.

I was also considering an option to ditch the SATA SSD completely and replace the mSATA drive with Samsung 850 EVO mSATA and was asking for opinions with that and if it brings some advantage over SATA. From what I read it should be much lighter, faster and lew power consuming. But I never used mSATA before (and they are quite expensive).

IronFly

your mSata is used only as cache drive, to speed up loading times on the HDD.

so, if you plan to switch the HDD to SSD, i suggest you to take off the mSata, since it will not usefull and can create some boot issues.

i don't know if Acer had released any fix about having SSD+mSATA boot issues, so....it's up to you if buying a simple SSD or a mSata SSD.

padgett

Sorry, was just relating my experience with the Windows System Image app included in Windows 7-10 (though they moved it in 10)

Looked at the Samsung software you referenced but it seems specific for certain models. I do not know if it refuses to run if a different product is detected.

But then what I do does not require disk speed, can see little difference between a 30 MB/s removable PATA and a 300 MB/s SSD. (have both in different machines) except when taking an image or copying my Music directory.

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