Changing my HDD for a SSD is the best thing I did to improve my laptop performance
584630
Changing my HDD for a SSD is the best thing I did to improve my laptop performance. Should have done it earlier.
4420212
I got tired of hearing my hard drive chattering as the PC booted up, and then waiting for all the background processes to load/complete before I could actually start USING the machine, so I thought I would try one of these SSDs. The performance increase is incredible -- even more than I hoped for. Windows boots and is ready to go in 30 seconds; PhotoShop CS 5 launches in about 5 seconds. I'm no longer waiting for anything and it's completely silent (no chatter). Fantastic! Running Windows XP on a Dell Quad-Core machine.

The Intel migration software is simple and does the job -- no problems at all. The whole process from start to finish took about 90 minutes. That includes the time I spent opening the box! There was a rebate at the time I bought this, and I think I spent more time filling out those forms than I did installing the drive.

The only bad thing is that I am now spoiled. I never want to use a spinning hard drive again!
4534907
Easy way to significantly boost speed! File access and application start-up times are drastically faster. You'll need to exprience the differences in speed for yourself - WOW!!  If you're familiar with data loss, before you begin I highly recommend preparing you old drive by backing up your data (archive files to a NAS or portable HDD, delete unused files, etc.) and then performing hard drive maintenance (uninstall unused programs, defragmenting, etc.). Next you're ready for drive cloning.

You'll need a few items:  A SATA to USB adapter, cloning software, and possibly a small jewelers screw driver.

For the SATA to USB adapter, I used the 'Sabrent USB 3.0 to SSD / 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Adapter' or you could simply disassembled a spare USB SATA to USB 3.0 HD enclosure and then plug it into an available USB 3.0 port (recommended).

For the cloning software, I used Apricorn (free version) EZ Gig IV Cloning Software to clone the hard drive of my laptop to the  SSD which took about ~45 minutes. Apricorn also allows you to deselect data folders from the copying proces (necessary for cloing to a smaller drive) as well as perform variable drive partitioning (automatic or manually). To connect the new drive for cloning, I simply attached the SATA adapter to the SSD, plugged it into the USB 3.0 port, and ran Apricorn.

If you're installing the SSD in a laptop, ensure you remove both your power adapter/cord and battery.  For my laptop, the physical installation took about 5 minutes and required using the jewelers screw driver to remove the back panel (2 screws), remove the HD carriage (4 screws), removing the drive from the carriage (4 screws), and installing the new SSD (reverse process). My laptop is newer so no BIOS settings were needed and now the system boots up in ~10 seconds.  Overall, the process took me about 3.5 - 4 hours (2.5 hours for backup and maintenance on the old drive and 1 hour for drive cloning) and was much easier than I anticipated.

I recommend installing the Sandisk dashboard software for information about and tools to help maintain the drive. The drive needs to be registered for warranty, and the serial number will be listed in the dashboard software.

This is my first SSD and I will never look back!
3534984
My wife, the photographer, thought I changed the processor in her laptop. Haha. I told her I her HDD with this SSD. That's it.
4525817
Upgraded my Dell N7110 17" I7 laptop from a 500GB hybrid drive to the Crucial MX100 512GB SSD drive and the speed difference is amazing! This is not my first SSD, but it is the first time I installed one on a system with SATA 3 and a high performance processor and it truly makes everything run so much better. Boot times are now down to less than a minute, including logging on. Response times when starting an application are just a few seconds.

I run a number of anti-virus, anti-malware, and system performance maintenance software packages that all like to run scans on the hard drive. With this SSD, the slow-down is minimal and I can continue to work while the maintenance scans are running.

I suspect that performance would be even better if I were to re-image my system and rebuild it again (it's been three years since I reimaged this laptop), but with its current performance level, I can continue to work without taking the time to reinstall all my software.
3720717
What can I say, I replaced my 1tb hdd with this 500gb ssd and my startup from OFF is like 6 seconds. I love having fewer moving parts and my laptop seems to run cooler with this ssd as well.
2597681
Amazing speed improvement for an old laptop with a bad HDD.
3851501
Reduced the boot time from six minutes to 35 seconds and significantly sped up general performance. This is a SATA 2 computer so that I did not get the full benefit, but I'm very happy with the improvement. Also, I did not use the Magician SW (see update below) to optimize Win 7 for SSD because I did not want to screw up the two other internal hard drives that remain in my computer.  Migration software worked flawlessly and set up was a breeze.  I used an eSATA external drive bay rather than USB to do the cloning and it worked fine.

Update 10/23/2015: I did not initially install the "optional" Samsung Magician software which is supposed to optimize performance but was initially so pleased with the speed that I put up with the occasional crash. When the crashes became more frequent, I decided to give the software a try and have not had a crash since. My guess is that the buffers it sets up are needed to help the old computer keep up with a drive that is much faster than the hard drives it was designed for.
92313
First things first: I own a MSI GE60 0ND laptop which is a great gaming laptop! But I wanted the boot times of an SSD but I didn't want to lose my 750gb nor did I want to shell out the big bucks to get big SSD. I found this to be my best option.

Pros: Computer boots up quick! takes about half the time as before!
Great for keeping files organized. I keep all of my programs on my SSD and all my data and games on my HDD!
Very Fast! Opening programs is almost instantaneous

Cons: I took the easy route out and did a clean install of windows 7 on my SSD, transferring the OS with your files is a nightmare! I would recommend just doing a clean install and then install your drives. Using special methods to transfer just waists your time. Just remember to back up your data.

Overall if your a more technical person you will have no problems with this device!
1659131
I have a 5 year old laptop that was getting to the end of its life in terms of speed (other wise the laptop is fine).  I bought this kit, which made it incredibly easy to do an upgrade and the results are amazing.  My 5 year old laptop is as fast as my other laptop which is only 1 year old.  SSDs make a huge difference.
3165939
Bought this as an upgrade for my wife's laptop in order to add a little more life to it, and when combined with a RAM upgrade, it did just that! If you've never dealt with a computer that used an SSD before and/or are considering one for the first time, stop what you're doing an buy this now. The increase in boot times and general performance was significant, and my wife now loves her laptop again!
3864160
The samsung 840 SSD was easy to install in my desktop. It contains everything needed to mount it in a standard size drive bay. It also contains a USB adaptor in case you wanted to use it as an external SSD drive.

Installation could not have been easier, and it has functioned without incident for months now.

The benefits of the SSD compared to a HDD have been immediately obvious for me. I made this my system disk loading my operating system (Windows 8) and all my program files on it. There has been an extremely noticeable and worthwhile speed improvement. I can't think of any more worthwhile investment for improving performance of my computer.
3359161
I have a top of the line Dell M6800 with a solid state hard drive.  I replaced it with this Samsung SSD and the the difference is amazing.  Many times faster.  Wow.  What an improvement!
2490572
Bought this just for my laptop without having to sacrifice storage space like I would with a regular ssd. Good performace compared to standard 7200rpm drives. It cut the boot times way down compared to the 5400rpm drive that came with my laptop. Games run better and load times are down. Granted this is not by no means an ssd drive, but for the price, performance and storage you get with this drive its well worth buying.
4131266
I upgraded a hybrid HDD/SSD drive and went from 100/60 read/write times to 540/500. I literally couldn't believe it and had to test multiple times to confirm. Well worth the money.
1005920
What a difference an SSD makes!! Performace in my already-fast 5th generation i7 laptop increased massively after upgrading to this hard drive.  VERY satisfied.
1278045
I have an old HP Envy M6, and I don't want to spend money buying a new laptop. It's still working fine but lags so much when opening certain programs. Especially, when Amazon Cloud Drive is uploading, I cannot do anything else. I upgraded the RAM to 8 GB already, still it doesn't help much. Greeksquad people advised me to have the PC refreshed and so leave it at Best Buy for a week or so. Not a good option.

I was debating between SSD and the cheaper Hybrid SSHD. My Hard Drive size is 750 GB. I came across this product, but I bought from Best Buy because I needed it asap. This is perfect for the size and the speed. With a price difference between SSD and SSHD less than $100, I decided to go with SSD.

I made the right choice. It was perfect. Replacing it is as easy as breeze. Just remember that you don't need the four screws to attach it to the laptop unlike the old HDD. As soon as it booted, I scanned my fingerprint, amazing! It took me to the main page less than 2 seconds. While Amazon Cloud Drive is uploading my videos in hundreds of GBs, I can use all other software just fine.

This is the biggest difference for me: using Logos Bible Software where I have thousands of books open when I click on the icon. With my old HDD, it could take 5 minutes for the thousands of books to be ready for use. When it was indexing other books, I couldn't do anything else. With the new SSD, loading thousands of books took less than 10 seconds. It makes a huge difference. The extra $100 more than SSHD is worth it.

You can do multitasking without any noticeable lagging. SSD pushes your productivity ahead. It makes a big difference in finishing your project or assignment. It really does.