I just replaced the hard disk in my Sony Z series laptop with an SSD. I dropped my machine shortly after I got it on concrete floor at TSA airport checkpoint 
. The machine survived it fine other than a broken power switch. But the hard disk was not too happy and over time, developed more and more problems to the point where I thought it was going to leave me stranded.
The old hard disk was a Toshiba 500 Gigabyte SATA 2.5 inch drive. All of this lingo is important to know as it instructs what you need to replace it. Fortunately if you go to device manger in Windows and look up the model number online you can get all of this.
My machine has 87 Gigabytes in use. So I opted for a 256 Gigabyte unit which cost $550. I went for Crucial since it was one of the cheapest and has good performance. Here it is again: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...e=crucial_realssd_c300-_-20-148-349-_-Product
Wouldn't you know it, it is on sale today for $80 less (I ordered from Amazon since I detest the extra credit card checks Newegg does and how they bounce orders because of it).
There is also a 1.8" drive in case you have a smaller hard disk.
Next up was getting a set up to clone by main hard disk. This is not easy to do since the new drive is half the size of the old and you want to properly copy and partition the drive. Furthermore, laptop companies ship with hidden partitions which have their system restoration software (image of the machine when new) which you would want to save. With proper cloning, you avoid having to do any software or OS re-install.
Acronis makes the best software here and has a 15 day eval for free. So you don't have to pay for that but you need a means to attach the new SATA SSD to your machine through the USB connection long enough to copy the old hard disk to it. I looked on Amazon and found this cheap option which has both the cloning software and USB to Sata cable/adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Note...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1296022310&sr=8-1
The combination worked like a charm and at $19 was a real bargain. You simply hook up the cable to the SSD, the other end to USB and run the software from CD. I ran it under Windows and it copied everything except my Outlook Inbox file which was due to me having Outlook open (it didn't warn me though). I think you can boot from the CD and do the copying there so that you don't have to worry about this issue (which was not a big deal for me since I simply synced with my email server once I booted).
The software nicely copied both the hidden and and primary partitions. It complained it could not verify the copy. So I clicked Properties->Tools and checked the file system and all was well.
Now we get to the fun part. How to open a laptop. Fortunately there is a great forum where people hang out and talk about laptops of all kinds: http://forum.notebookreview.com/. Go in there and search for threads on replacing hard disks and such and there will be lots of guides including links to how to open your laptop.
That said, I could not find a thread on my specific Z series. But found one key piece of data that to get to the hard disk you have to take off the keyboard and operate on it from the top. After taking off have a dozen screws and lining them up on a flat surface similar to where I took them out of, I had to pry open the keyboard as it has a number of tabs that keep it there even after all the screws are taken off. To do this, I used a plastic putty knife and gently worked my way around.
The keyboard then popped off exposing the hard disk. Two more screws and a bracket taken off allowed me to pull out the old hard disk and insert the SSD. Connected the combo power+SATA onto new drive and powered on the machine to make sure all worked. Windows 7 booted, installed a driver and asked for a reboot. All was well so I screwed everything back together.
And what a joy. The machine response is substantially better. Everything is far more predictable. It is like going from driving a compact car with a four cylinder machine to a V8 BMW. People don't realize that their CPU is idle 90% of the time, waiting for the hard disk in typical of user workloads.
On scale 1 to 7, I rate this a 7. It is easy to break the laptop case and you need to be handy with small screws and small parts to pry the unit. Larger laptops should be much easier though.
So build up the confidence if you are at all handy with such things and upgrade your laptop (and desktop) systems with SSDs. The above tool and cable really speeds the process along.
. The machine survived it fine other than a broken power switch. But the hard disk was not too happy and over time, developed more and more problems to the point where I thought it was going to leave me stranded.The old hard disk was a Toshiba 500 Gigabyte SATA 2.5 inch drive. All of this lingo is important to know as it instructs what you need to replace it. Fortunately if you go to device manger in Windows and look up the model number online you can get all of this.
My machine has 87 Gigabytes in use. So I opted for a 256 Gigabyte unit which cost $550. I went for Crucial since it was one of the cheapest and has good performance. Here it is again: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...e=crucial_realssd_c300-_-20-148-349-_-Product
Wouldn't you know it, it is on sale today for $80 less
(I ordered from Amazon since I detest the extra credit card checks Newegg does and how they bounce orders because of it).
There is also a 1.8" drive in case you have a smaller hard disk.
Next up was getting a set up to clone by main hard disk. This is not easy to do since the new drive is half the size of the old and you want to properly copy and partition the drive. Furthermore, laptop companies ship with hidden partitions which have their system restoration software (image of the machine when new) which you would want to save. With proper cloning, you avoid having to do any software or OS re-install.
Acronis makes the best software here and has a 15 day eval for free. So you don't have to pay for that but you need a means to attach the new SATA SSD to your machine through the USB connection long enough to copy the old hard disk to it. I looked on Amazon and found this cheap option which has both the cloning software and USB to Sata cable/adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Note...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1296022310&sr=8-1
The combination worked like a charm and at $19 was a real bargain. You simply hook up the cable to the SSD, the other end to USB and run the software from CD. I ran it under Windows and it copied everything except my Outlook Inbox file which was due to me having Outlook open (it didn't warn me though). I think you can boot from the CD and do the copying there so that you don't have to worry about this issue (which was not a big deal for me since I simply synced with my email server once I booted).
The software nicely copied both the hidden and and primary partitions. It complained it could not verify the copy. So I clicked Properties->Tools and checked the file system and all was well.
Now we get to the fun part
. How to open a laptop. Fortunately there is a great forum where people hang out and talk about laptops of all kinds: http://forum.notebookreview.com/. Go in there and search for threads on replacing hard disks and such and there will be lots of guides including links to how to open your laptop.That said, I could not find a thread on my specific Z series. But found one key piece of data that to get to the hard disk you have to take off the keyboard and operate on it from the top. After taking off have a dozen screws and lining them up on a flat surface similar to where I took them out of, I had to pry open the keyboard as it has a number of tabs that keep it there even after all the screws are taken off. To do this, I used a plastic putty knife and gently worked my way around.
The keyboard then popped off exposing the hard disk. Two more screws and a bracket taken off allowed me to pull out the old hard disk and insert the SSD. Connected the combo power+SATA onto new drive and powered on the machine to make sure all worked. Windows 7 booted, installed a driver and asked for a reboot. All was well so I screwed everything back together.
And what a joy. The machine response is substantially better. Everything is far more predictable. It is like going from driving a compact car with a four cylinder machine to a V8 BMW
. People don't realize that their CPU is idle 90% of the time, waiting for the hard disk in typical of user workloads.On scale 1 to 7, I rate this a 7. It is easy to break the laptop case and you need to be handy with small screws and small parts to pry the unit. Larger laptops should be much easier though.
So build up the confidence if you are at all handy with such things and upgrade your laptop (and desktop) systems with SSDs. The above tool and cable really speeds the process along.
