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Inspiron 17R 7720 - Clone mSATA SSD + HDD to SSHD or just HDD to SSHD?
I have an Inspiron 17R 7720 with a 32GB mSATA SSD and a 1TB HDD. It is my understanding that my computer boots off of the mSATA drive and runs some my of my software off that drive as well, while the bulk of my software and user data are stored on the slower HDD. Amazon has 1TB SSHDs in the $80 price range with claimed throughput 2X that of the HDD.
Question 1 - I'm not a gamer, most of my "computing" is surfing the web, MS Excel and Word, and occasional spurts of editing/post processing digital photographs, probably less than 10% of the time spent on the computer. Will I see any noticeable performance improvement by upgrading to a SSHD?
Question 2 - Were I to upgrade to a SSHD, should I clone my mSATA SSD + HDD to the SSHD or just the HDD to the SSHD?
Question 3 - Obviously cloning just the HDD to SSHD would be fairly straightforward and easily accomplished; what would be involved in cloning both my mSATA SSD + HDD to SSHD?
Question 4 - Assuming I do replace either just the HDD or both drives with a SSHD, how does the BIOS recognize the changed drive(s)? Do I have to manually edit the BIOS configuration to reflect the change or is it automatically detected during the system boot?
ejn63
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October 26th, 2016 04:00
The mSATA drive is a cache only - the system boots from the hard drive, not the SSD.
You're not going to find a solid state hybrid drive much - if at all - faster than your current setup. The way to speed up your system is to install a native SATA SSD -- not a hybrid drive. That WILL boost performance.
You won't need the cache drive with a native SSD at all so you can clone the hard drive to the SSD and deactivate the mSATA drive thereafter. You will need to change the Intel Rapid Storage setting in BIOS setup.