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My son and I upgraded his Acer Aspire ES1-533 from HDD to SSD (same capacity, 500GB), using a Crucial MX500 SSD. It seems to have significantly boosted performance so far, touchwood!

After the SSD upgrade, the login screen comes up in the 18th second after power-on and Chrome and Word come up in the 40th second after power-on (I typed in login passwd fast, then clicked on Chrome and MSWord in quick succession; former came up much faster)

We later also upgraded RAM from 4GB to 8GB, but that seems to have negligible effect so far. I guess it'll show its benefits when we have several multiple applns/tabs open and running something.

Yes SSD will make your laptop response very good. In fact, with this SSD and RAM upgrade you will never feel like upgrading your laptop if you are a casual user.

I did exactly the same for one of the Acer Aspire ES1-433G and everything worked like charm and the improvement in speed and performance was significant.

With this experience, I tried with the other Acer Aspire 4750G, but was not successful in cloning the SSD:
Following were the differences:

1) Original OS was Windows 7 Home premium which got upgraded to Windows 10 Home.
But this slowed down the laptop and hence did a recovery re-installation of Windows 7 home premium using recovery disks and updated them.

2) Installed single stick 8GB RAM while the original was 2+2.
8GB single stick did not cause any issues, but I thought 4+4 would be better.
Even with the original 2+2 RAM, the cloning was unsuccessful

3) Minitool Partition wizard was the software used for HDD cloning.

Any suggestions on what can be done for successful cloning of HDD to SSD.

Thanks.

My son did the cloning part. He used Acronis for this, as suggested by the Crucial SSD installation instructions. But during this step he got errors/msgs saying that the SSD was uninitialized, not sure what that means. He then googled a bit and ended up using Minitool Partition Wizard. But the process was too time consuming so he aborted it, and ran the cloning process in Acronis anyway by just clicking on Next, and proceeded. That seemed to kick off the cloning process alright and it worked thereafter. So, he seems to think that perhaps the Minitool Partition Wizard step isn't absolutely necessary, for the cloning.

One thing I'd recommend, is to decouple the SSD and RAM upgrade. Don't do both at once, as then you wouldn't be able to isolate the fault. We did the SSD upgrade first, observed it for about half a day and ran several power-on cycles, then drained the (non-removeable) battery and did the RAM upgrade.

Another tip:
- Take ESD precautions. Wear a grounded wrist strap or discharge yourself in some way completely. Being winter and dry weather, ESD damage is all the more likely now.

- Remove the battery and do the upgrade. If your battery is not easily removable (as was the case with our laptop), then discharge it fully before attempting the upgrade.

While cloning the first laptop HDD, I too got some error message, but ignoring it and proceeded and everything was fine after that.

But this error message did not come up while cloning the second laptop HDD, however in the end, either the copied partition or installation was corrupt and could not be booted at all.

Do you think if I try with another cloning software such as Acornis would be helpful?


Yes I have tried decoupling the SSD and RAM.
In fact i installed the orginal 2+2 RAM and formatted the SSD and tried cloning, but ended up with the same error message and could not boot from SSD after cloning.

Yes I had taken the precautions for ESD and also removed the battery, yet all these efforts did not yield any good result.

Totally baffled and beaten and may have to take it to professionals, I think unless some new idea comes up.

Thanks again

I too am absolutely loving the benefits of an SSD upgrade.

I upgraded my Asus FX553VD to a Samsung 960 M.2 PCIe SSD as the boot drive.

The original 1TB spinner that came with the laptop I upgraded to a 2TB Seagate Firecuda SSHD. Unfortunately, the Seagate gave up the ghost about a year later, partly due to my own fault.

When the Seagate failed, I replaced it with a Samsung 860 Evo 2TB SATA SSDas storage drive (may replace this with a 1TB 860 and shift the 2TB to my desktop).

Also I have upgraded the original 8GB DDR4 RAM to 16GB.
So my laptop is now fully solid state, and pretty snappy into the bargain.

My Dell Latitude E5540 laptop (2014 made) gave some kirr kirr/grinding type sound this week. The sound came for some 3 to 4 seconds and it came 3 to 4 times. Couldn't identify the exact location from where the sound came. Even heard the sound after the laptop was completely shut down once. It is working fine as of now.. I performed disk optimization and error checking after that and there are no issues. Did not get that type of sound again in the last 2 days. Is it an indication of a hard disk failure or any other issue. The current hard disk is a 500gb 5400 rpm model IIRC. The processor is Intel i5 4310 with 8gb RAM.

If its a HDD failure indication, planning to replace it with a SSD of same size by cloning the current HDD to SSD. Any easy to use tool for cloning and any suggestions for SSD. Should I consider 2.5" SATA SSD only for this replacement. The OS is Win 10 Pro. Is it worth going for a SSD replacement. Thanks in advance.

I could be the sound of the cooling fan. Have that checked and replace it if is wobbly.

Its a good opportunity to change to SSD.
Please check if the laptop has a M.2 slot for the best SSD upgrade.
If not then the usual 2.5 inch SATA 3 SSD upgrade should be possible.

With Windows 10 and their frequent "updates" it just does not make sense to have the normal HDD.
Mircosoft has indirectly pushed everyone with Windows 10 to use SSD's.

SSD cloning can be DIY if you are confident of the process, otherwise take it to the professionals.
I had used Minitool Partition Wizard which is a free cloning software.

I have the exact same model, but it came with a 256GB SSD. I too suggest you to replace with a SSD drive. Makes a quantum leap in speed.

I have a December 2016 HP Pavilion 17.3 4K laptop that came with M2.SSD installed. This was bought in the US The user manual does indicate NVME as a part. In Dec 2016, At that time, NVME was not so widely accepted. I wanted to replace my 250GB M2 SATA ssd in laptop with an NVME. Can I do that. Of course the easy way would be purchase and install an NVME myself, but that would require buying first. NVME PCIE and M2 SATA seem to have different connectors though the form factor M2.2280 is identical.

I am facing a strange issue. When I connect my laptop to an external screen and close the lid, the Wifi speed drops to less than 1 mbps. If I keep the lid open no problems, and speed is fine. Appreciate any pointers.

Go to Device Manager. From Network Adapters, choose the Wireless Adapter & right click on it & properties. Go to the Power Management tab & see if it there is some relevant option to turn off the wireless adapter to save power.
Also check Power options in Control Panel & select "Do nothing" for turn off the lid option.

It is probably because the antennae for wifi are located in the lid.

Is there a way out in that case?