How to make the computer faster

Like we said in the article of the last week on “How to extend the RAM of the computer“, a needed and complementary operation is the one to replace the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) with a Solid State Drive (SSD). This, infact, is one of the most efficient solutions to make the computer faster.

In this guide we will speak about how to make the cloning’s proceeding of our own HDD and the following replacing with a SSD.

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What a SSD is

In reality it isn’t right to call a SSD “disk”. This because in a classic rigid disk there are real rotating disks with some heads which write and read the datas. A solid state disk, instead, is composed by a serie of memory’s modules on which are been stored the datas.

Without get too into the functioning of those chips, it is important to know that for the reading and for the writing of the datas it isn’t needed any more the mechanic and magnetic movements made by the hard disk’s head, by obtaining a huge advantage about the speed of the computer’s switching on, programs and files’ opening and so on.

The disadvantage, by the way, exists. And it is important to be conscious before to take the decision to replace the HDD with a SSD. Being this focused on flash memories, it is consequentially characterised by a limited number of writing’s cycles. Surely the more modern SSD unities are able to guarantee high performances for many years, but we need to consider this “limit”.

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Cloning the HDD on the SSD

To clone the hard disk, we suggest the software AOMEI Backupper. The proceeding is really easy and intuitive. Infact, after connected the SSD to the PC through a simple adapter USB – SATA (which is a connector that from one side has a USB socket to insert in the PC and on the other side it has a SATA socket to insert in the SSD), it will be enough to follow few small steps on the mentioned software.

The first step consists to click on “Clone” in the menu on the left, and after that on “Disk Clone”. Now it is possible to select the HDD on which it is included the operating system (usually indicated with C:). By clicking then on “Next”, we could select the destination’s untiy of memory, in our case the SSD.

Due it is a passage from a hard disk to a solid state disk, we need to tick on “Align partition to optimize for SSD” before to click on “Start Clone” to ending the procedure.

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The alignment of a SSD

This operation has to be made only the first ime, which is when the operating system has been installed or when we clone a HDD with an operating system. The alignment shall ensure that every logic sector starts in a “physical page” of the SSD.

If we don’t do this operation, the datas will be written without consider this limit, consequentially bringing to a reduction of the SSD’s performances (even if it is intagible). Especially, in the first “physical page” there isn’t nothing written and it takes the specific name of “erase block size”.

This block is useful to the definition of the minimum datas’ block module on which the disk’s controller acts to move the informations. This evalue represents in the biggest part of the cases to 1024 kB (1 MB).

Replace the HDD with the SSD

Once completed those passages, we could access to the mother board on which is placed the HDD just removing the back cover (both if it is a notebook or a desktop computer), unscrewing the old HDD and setting up the new SSD.

To reset the computer, it will automatically recognise the new SSD and you will have your computer, with an essential increased speed (about 6 – 7 times faster!).