Physically installing an SSD is a actually pretty straightforward and can easily be done at home. The solid state drive is the same size as a laptop (notebook) 2½” mechanical hard drive. They usually come with a bracket which enables you to simply slide it into the stiffy disk drive bay of your chassis. The SSD connects to the motherboard via a standard SATA cable. (I’ll supply you with one if you need it). Switch on the computer and the machine should recognize the Solid State Drive without any fuss.
If you are doing a complete new re-install of Windows, then you are good to go.
However, if the contents of your existing mechanical hard drive are to be transferred to the SSD (because you want the Solid state drive to be the boot drive and reap the most speed rewards), then it gets a bit more complicated.
First of all, you need to establish that the actual used space on your mechanical drive is less than the total capacity of the new SSD. If not, then you will have to copy off (backup) some of the stuff from your mechanical hard drive somewhere else (like a removable backup hard drive) until the actual used stuff on the old mechanical drive takes up less space than the capacity of the new Solid State Drive.
Once that is done, then you use cloning software (like Acronis or Norton Ghost) to make a mirror image of your old Mechanical drive into the SSD. Once that is done, you remove the old mechanical drive and boot up with the new solid state drive. Most people then format the old drive (wiping it clean) and put it back into the machine as a second data hard drive and restore the data that was backed up in the preparatory step above. That’s it!
If this all sounds a bit too complicated, there is an easier option. When you purchase the SSD, I will perform the above procedure for you – migrating the operating system and transferring the data for you for a very special discounted labour price (Because you purchased the drive from me.) I’ll quote you, but to give you an idea, depending on how much data has to be backed up and restored and any other procedures that you need done, it will probably cost you somewhere between R250 and R750 labour charge.
For my latest prices of SSD’s, click here
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