re: can you tell me if this desktop is decent

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bottom line is its not the one we ordered

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I'll say. What are the specs even? Probably low-end.

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do you think windows 7 will work fine for him for years to come?

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Yeah. Until the year 2020 to be exact, which is when security updates (extended support) will cease.

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also, if we get the Lenovo, do you think it will be a pain to install the SSD?

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Well, you saw the photo of the interior. You bought a SATA cable, right?

Here's one ghetto way to do it. Making sure the cables are clear of the fan of course.


If your SATA cable is long enough you could just sit the SSD on top of the DVD drive. Just be creative. You know what needs to be plugged into the SSD, you know where the other end of the SATA cable has to connect to the motherboard, and you know that SSDs don't need to be mounted securely like hard drives. Just use tape, zip ties, velcro, etc. etc. to stick it to a location meeting the following criteria:

1. Isn't the motherboard itself and doesn't touch fans.
2. The SATA power cables can reach all three of your SATA devices (SSD, DVD Drive, Hard Drive)
3. SATA interface cable can reach your motherboard SATA port from your SSD.
4. Isn't an open flame or under water.

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Dumbass at frys told me my new computer should have extras.

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Hell, maybe it does, maybe already inside the case. Haven't seen the inside of a prebuilt in person in a long time. Easy to pick one up I assume, since you're lucky enough to live near a Fry's. As long as it's appropriately cheap. In fact, if you have a local computer repair shop, they may have a junk box full of them and would give you one. Computer Evolutions near my house has given me a few over the years when I need them. They are worthless, and it sucks ever having to buy one. I remember best buy used to sell one in store for like $15. Sickening. Not sure what Fry's charges, but probably less than best buy. Radio shack has them, too, probably for $5+. Whereas monoprice likely sells them for under a dollar, and Amazon for a couple of dollars.

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So in a nutshell. If we decide on a Lenovo with 7 and the ssd, will it be fast enough for him to enjoy his every day computer needs? The more he enjoys it the less I have to hear about it

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There's always the possibility of viruses and malware, and needing you to show him how to do something, random hardware failures just because, etc. The SSD merely prevents the inevitable "this computer is just getting way too slow" -- But don't let him accumulate all of his videos and documents and pics etc. on the SSD. That needs to go on the hard drive. I will post instructions for making it simple and seamless to use the hard drive as media file storage -- i.e., making sure that these libraries point to folders on the hard drive:


But since you're getting the PC replaced, I have some more time to write that rather than attempt it in whatever state of incoherence I'm in right now. I can't believe I've been up for nearly 38 hours now.

Ok now thinking of just reordering the original dell we wanted with 8.1. About to go return unit.

So you're telling me if I install the start is back he would never notice the difference between 7 and 8?

Kickass. Just exchanged the one they gave us for the original dell I wanted with 8.1. Will take a week to come in and then I will hit you up. Thanks again.

no kidding right?

lol


since its gonna take a week to come in im going to get one off monoprice. do I just order a normal SATA cable or do they come in different sizes?

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since its gonna take a week to come in im going to get one off monoprice. do I just order a normal SATA cable or do they come in different sizes?

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Keep in mind shipping from Monoprice can sometimes take a while. I ordered a USB Type B cable from there a while back, standard shipping, and it took a little over a week. Doesn't always take that long, though, but it's standard mail and at the mercy of USPS. Shipping adds $2-3 to the price, so if Fry's has one for under $4-5 and it's convenient, might be worth just grabbing it from there.

They do come in different lengths. Particularly, Monoprice sells lenghths varying from 6 inches to several feet. The height of the Dell is only 14 inches, so an 18-inch cable would be plenty to reach the SATA port from wherever you end up mounting the SSD.

If you do order from monoprice, just get this one: LINK


The most limiting factor will be the position of available SATA Power connectors. As you saw in the pictures I posted, the most convenient one in the dell is a short length away from the other one connected to the hard drive. If you would like to expand your options for where you can mount the SSD in the case, just buy a SATA extension cable. 83 cents on monoprice: LINK

It won't change the shipping price whether you buy just the SATA cable or both cables. Total, including shipping to my zip code, is $3.76.

Hey! Guess what happened!

My sister called last night. Said her computer shut down and would not boot up again.

Today, I went to the store, bought a Win7 computer and carried it to her house.

Within 15 minutes I had:
1. Unboxed it
2. Hooked it up
3. Booted it up
4. Connected it to the internet

Shortly thereafter, she was checking her email. She is very happy.

And, amazingly, she never asked one single question about specs!

But, enough about me.

How is your project coming along?

You have transcended troll status and are now a level 5 shite-for-brains. So, good job on that. That's fortunate she didn't ask about specs, since you would have no clue how to respond.

But since my project, which is writing HDD-to-SSD cloning instructions, has nothing to do with your dumbassery, I'm gonna go continue writing said instructions.

PART C: Cloning your OS


To demonstrate the cloning process, I'm using my 500GB Samsung 840 EVO as the original Windows drive, and my 256GB Samsung 830 as the destination drive.

STEP 1 - Install Macrium Reflect and Partition Wizard
Download and Install Macrium Reflect (Free) from here: LINK

- Download and Install MiniTool Partition Wizard (Free) from here: LINK

STEP 2 - Open Macrium Reflect to Start Cloning
- When programs are installed, open Macrium to begin the cloning process.

Your hard drive should be the first drive you see in the list.
- Make sure every partition is checked, as shown in the screenshot below.



Depending on how the manufacturer partitioned your drive, you may have a different arrangement of partitions, or more of them. Doesn’t matter, just select them all. If we need to make adjustments, we will in the next couple of steps.

- Click “Clone this disk…”

STEP 3 - Cloning and Shrinking Partitions


- Click “Select a disk to clone to…”

- Select your SSD:


- Click Next:


STEP 3b - Open Partition Wizard to Shrink Partitions if Necessary
Uh oh! What happens if I see this message?


(NOTE: if you do not get this message, you can skip steps 3b through 3f and move to Step 4)

Macrium Reflect will shrink the last partition in a series so that the full disk can meet the size of your destination disk. But, if your partitions are arranged in such a way that shrinking the last partition still doesn’t make the disk small enough, it will exclude partitions. We don’t want that.

- Click OK. Cancel, and close Macrium Reflect for now.
- Remember when I said to download Partition Wizard? Time to open it.

So let’s say that your hard drive partitions look something like this:


In the image above, we see a drive with typical boot/recovery partitions, the main C: partition that holds your OS files and programs, and then to the right of that, a partition that I’ve labeled “Rescue.” It’s typical of OEMs like Dell, HP, etc. to have a separate recovery partition that holds OS files, OEM drivers, utilities, etc. so that you can create a “rescue disk” to restore your OS cleanly if you ever run into any serious problems.

In the example I’m demonstrating, we have a recovery/rescue partition positioned to the right of the main C: partition, and Macrium Reflect wants to automatically delete that rescue partition and then shrink down the C: partition. We do not want to lose this rescue partition, so we are going to use Partition Wizard to shrink the C: partition ourselves and move the rescue partition.

STEP 3c - Resizing/Shrinking
WARNING! READ CAREFULLY! DO NOT RESIZE OR DELETE ANY RECOVERY OR BOOT PARTITIONS!


- First, right click on your C: Partition and select “Move/Resize”


- In this window shown in the screenshot below, you are simply going to drag the partition to a smaller size so that the entire drive's partitions equal less than the size of your new SSD – Precision is NOT necessary. We will adjust that later. The point is to shrink it well below the size of your SSD (FYI, a 250GB drive in Windows is recognized as 232GB, a 120GB drive as 111GB, etc. I’ll save the explanation for another day).

Since I’m moving my OS to a 256GB SSD, I’ll just drag my partition size to somewhere around 190GB. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s big enough to hold the data already on it and small enough to fit the new SSD along with the rest of the partitions. This is not the permanent size of your partition, don’t worry.


So, dragging it to 191.06GB, means my partitions total just over 202GB. Good enough.

- Click OK.

This sends the resize operation to a queue (circled in blue in the screenshot below). Notice that by shrinking the partition, you have a good bit of unallocated space (circled in red).



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NOTE:
Some OEMs partition their drives to have a C: partition for the OS files and programs, and a separate partition for your personal files (documents, videos, pictures, music). So maybe your partitions would look something like this:


This is common on hard drives to isolate the OS from your files for various reasons, such as being more readily recoverable if the sectors on the OS partition become corrupt. This is not as necessary on an SSD, because SSD controllers do not recognize partitions and do not hold data in the same manner a hard drive does. Again, I’ll save a more thorough explanation for another time.

If you do have a large partition like above just for data, I recommend backing up any of that partition's data to an external drive and then deleting that partition before proceeding.

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STEP 3d - Move Partitions as Necessary
But we still have the issue of that “Rescue” partition positioned after the unallocated space. We need to move any of the partitions that reside to the right of that unallocated space.

Remember, this is just a demonstration. Your partitions will look different, and if you have multiple partitions positioned after C:, you will need to move all of them.

- To move this Rescue Partition, I’m going to right click on it and select Move/Resize, just as we did for the C: partition. Doing that will bring you to this screen:


- Don’t resize it. Just drag it all the way to the left, as shown below:


- Click OK.

If you followed instructions correctly, the hard drive should show only unallocated space on the right-hand side, like this:



But we aren’t done yet. We still have to tell the program to actually perform the tasks we’ve assigned.

STEP 3e - APPLY the Operations
On the left side of the window, you’ll notice your pending operations:


Nothing is final in Partition Wizard until you click "Apply."

As shown above, the operations of resizing C: and moving the rescue partition are "pending." It isn’t until we click “Apply” that these operations are done.

- Click Apply, then “yes” to confirm, and be ready to reboot.

When the operation starts, you’ll see this message:


- Click “Restart Now.” You will reboot and eventually see a screen like this:


- Just let it do its thing, and when it’s done, you’ll be back in Windows.

PART D: Setting up Hard Drive as Storage


STEP 1 - Plug in the HDD Again
- Shut down your computer and plug your hard drive back in. (Keep your SSD connected as well)

- Turn the computer on again.

- When you’re back in Windows, go to Windows Explorer. We just want to verify that your PC still booted to your SSD and didn’t get confused by the re-introduction of the hard drive. Check the size of your C: partition to confirm:


If it looks like Windows booted back to your hard drive, that’s OK, because we are about to use Partition Wizard to wipe it clean. If you're using the hard drive, it will simply involve a reboot, and the PC will no longer be confused by two boot drives.

STEP 2 - Wipe and Reformat the Hard Drive
Now that we’ve confirmed that the cloning has been successful, time to wipe the old hard drive and prepare it to use as file storage.

- Open Partition Wizard. Right click on your old hard drive and select “Delete All Partitions”


- Right-click on the newly unallocated space on your hard drive and click “Create”


You will create a new partition so that the hard drive is usable as storage.


- The only thing you need to do here is name your partition. You can call it “storage” or “hard drive” or whatever you want. You can change the drive letter if you want, but that’s just a matter of preference.

- Click OK, and the window will close. Now, click “Apply” at the top left corner of the main window.


- Click yes when prompted “Apply Changes?”

Your hard drive will delete the existing partitions and begin the formatting process, and let you know when it’s done.

STEP 3 - Set up Library Folders
Now, we want to make it more seamless to save and access files on your hard drive. To do this, we are going to change the location of your libraries. Your libraries are these:


This is where you should be storing your videos, pictures, music, documents, and anything you download from the internet.

By default, Windows directs these libraries to folders on your C: drive, at C:\Users\[yourname].

- First, go to your freshly formatted hard drive in Windows Explorer, and either right click or press Ctrl+Shift+n to create a new folder.


- We want to make folders that correspond with each library:


- Now to redirect the libraries to these newly created folders. Let’s start with the Downloads library. Right click on it and select “Properties”


- Click the “Location” tab. We want to tell it to use your “Downloads” folder on your hard drive. You can do this by clicking “Move…” and selecting the folder on your hard drive, or by simply typing the directory manually:


For example, in the last step, we assigned the letter G to our hard drive when we formatted it, so we’d simply type G:\Downloads. Likewise, for the other libraries we’d use G:\Documents, G:\Videos, and so on – depending, of course, on what you decide to name those folders.

- Click OK. Repeat this for Pictures, Documents, and Videos.

You’re done.