{"id":1539,"date":"2012-09-12T21:51:36","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T20:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/test\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2012-09-12T22:00:06","modified_gmt":"2012-09-12T21:00:06","slug":"kingston-hyperx-ssd-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/?p=1539","title":{"rendered":"Kingston HyperX SSD Upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HyperXSSD1\"<\/a>Recently I wrote about my two year old laptop<\/a> which, compared to my main PC, is painfully slow when it comes to Photoshop. With maxed out RAM and Photoshop CS6 installed I thought my laptop was at the end of its life. However the people at Kingston Technology had other ideas and sent me one of their super fast, state of the art SSD upgrade kits to test. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re new to the world of SSD\u2019s (Solid State Drive) think of them as a giant camera memory card. With no moving parts they\u2019re faster, use less power and are more durable then a traditional mechanical hard drive. All in all it sounds like a great idea, just so long as I can fit it. <\/p>\n

How to upgrade
<\/font><\/b>If the thought of upgrading a computer hard drive yourself fills you with dread than the Kingston SSD upgrade kit is worth a look. Everything needed to do the job is in the box as you can see in this video or read below.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s in the box?
<\/font><\/b>You get a Kingston 256GB SSD Extreme X drive, a USB enclosure for cloning purposes and a CD with all the cloning software and instructions. The thoughtful people at Kingston even throw in a nifty little small screwdriver and you\u2019ll be glad they did. <\/p>\n

Although I\u2019m using the kit to upgrade a laptop, the Kingston kit also includes all the cables, screws and adaptors you\u2019d need to mount the SSD in a desktop case if you\u2019d prefer. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that the instructions are a PDF file on the CD so you\u2019ll either need to print them out, put them on a second PC or memorise them before you begin. Fortunately the whole upgrade process can be summed up in three steps. <\/p>\n

Check the space<\/b>
The Kingston Extreme X SSD is 256GB in size but it\u2019s replacing a 500GB drive. Now it doesn\u2019t take a genius to realise that they don\u2019t fit. Fortunately I\u2019ve used less then 200GB of space which is lucky as otherwise I\u2019d have had to move some data off the drive and on to a back up disc of some sort. <\/p>\n

\"HyperXSSD2\"<\/a>Replace the hard drive<\/b>
After unplugging the power cable and removing the battery, I flipped open the cover that hides the laptops hard drive and removed the retaining screws. I then screwed in the new, empty Kingston SSD, replaced the screws and cover and reattached the power. <\/p>\n

The old hard drive is then placed into the Kingston supplied hard drive housing and connected to the computer via the supplied USB cable. <\/p>\n

Cloning the disc<\/b>
The final step is the longest to do but also the easiest. Kingston supply a CD which has cloning software from Acronis which simplifies the disc cloning process to a couple of clicks. All I had to do was start the computer with the CD in the drive and it launches the Acronis software. There is an \u201cAdvanced\u201d option but as suggested by Kingston, I selected the automatic option and away it went. <\/p>\n

The cloning process took a little over 90 minutes to complete and once done I removed the CD, unplugged the USB cable and restarted the computer. <\/p>\n

The results
<\/font><\/b>From the very first time I started the laptop with the SSD installed I could see the improvement in speed. Where before I would have to wait a few minutes for windows to boot and \u201ccalm down\u201d before I could do anything, now it\u2019s ready to go within 60 seconds. Photoshop launches in 2 seconds flat and everything feels so much snappier. <\/p>\n

Of course what I wanted was hard facts so I repeated my Photoshop speed test<\/a> and the results were impressive.<\/p>\n

With Kingston SSD<\/strong>: Photoshop CS5 =<\/font> 105.5 sec      Photoshop CS6<\/font> =<\/font> 95.5 sec<\/font><\/p>\n

With Original HDD<\/strong>: Photoshop CS5 =<\/font>157.5 sec       Photoshop CS6 =<\/font> 139.5 sec<\/font> <\/p>\n

That means I\u2019ve increased the performance of Photoshop by 1\/3rd<\/sup> simply by changing the old hard drive for a new SSD. Now that\u2019s impressive! <\/p>\n

Geeky bit<\/b><\/font>
<\/font>OK if you\u2019ve made it down this far then lets talk about the technical stuff. The speed tests below show the Kingston HyperX SSD out performs the original hard drive in both read and write speeds by more then double.<\/p>\n

\"HDD-speed<\/a>Yes SSD\u2019s are fast and in theory the Kingston Hyper X is about as fast as they come but to make use of that speed I need a SATA3 6GB\/s interface. Not surprisingly my two year old laptop isn\u2019t SATA3 compatible it may not even be the older and slower SATA2 but none the less it\u2019s still faster then the stock HDD which had a spin speed of 5600K<\/p>\n

Of course I\u2019m also getting the advantage of longer battery life and the risk of HDD head failure has gone. <\/p>\n

Critics of SSD\u2019s will point out their theoretical limited life expectancy and high cost compared to a mechanical HDD but others will tell you the limited life issue has largely been solved and I\u2019ll tell you that my laptop feels like new. <\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/font><\/b>
The Kingston HyperX SSD upgrade kit may cost a little more then a bare drive but that higher price tag brings with it the confidence of a successful upgrade. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about doing a SSD upgrade of a while but have always been put off as I thought it would be time consuming and probably cause more problems then it solved\u2026 I was wrong. <\/p>\n

The Kingston Hyper X upgrade kit had everything that I needed and more. The instructions were easy to understand although I\u2019d have preferred a printed \u201cquick start guide\u201d over a PDF. <\/p>\n

The 33% improvement in Photoshop speed is great but that\u2019s only half the story because of course EVERYTHING is faster. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re sitting on the SSD fence the Kingston kit makes a great choice and I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I wrote about my two year old laptop which, compared to my main PC, is painfully slow when it comes to Photoshop. With maxed out RAM and Photoshop CS6 installed I thought my laptop was at the end of its life. However the people at Kingston Technology had other ideas and sent me one … Continue reading Kingston HyperX SSD Upgrade<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1542,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/1542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}