No USB to Sata cable with new SSD purchase , other ways to install.

I think you'll be fine! At worst, you'll find that you have to put your old hard drive back into the laptop if the SSD isn't working out for some reason. The alignment thing is why I recommended a clean Windows install, by the way, which is how I've always done it when installing an SSD. I've never done a straight clone migration just because I like that clean slate start and that way I know I am maximizing the performance gain from the SSD. I've done, let's see, an SSD Windows 7 install on an old Intel hard drive, SSD Windows 7 install with GPT formatting on a brand new Samsung SSD, two OS X Lion installs on Samsung SSDs and an Ubuntu install on that same old Intel SSD. Typically, I treat SSDs just like any other hard drive but it is important afterwards to run the software that came with the SSDs to optimize it for best performance and make sure SSD-specific stuff like TRIM is on and functioning.

I'd say dive in and report back if you have issues. Good luck.

Thanks a lot janitoronmars and WHS (by the way have you considered a "mens room attendant " position instead of custodian ?

I have found that saying your a "mens room attendant" always impresses that special lady friend while custodian sometimes makes them think your a loser .

Will report back if i have issues

Well i followed the commands WHS mentioned and all completed successfully but the new SSD is still not recognized. The SSD is showing it's disk is zero and it said the disk 0 is now formatted and the primary patition.

It also said it's active but when i went to restore there was no disk found.

I used the Win 7 built in program, it always has worked fine and is always recognized so i'm not sure why it's not here.

Can i install a fresh version of win 7 with my win 7 sp1 image that i burned to disk using a microsoft ISO image? I have no issues of the SSD showing in bios or anything.

I can also make an image now with Macrium and put it on the external hard drive and try again.

So you are saying you tried to restore the Windows created image using the Intel utility and it didn't take?

janitoronmars said:

So you are saying you tried to restore the Windows created image using the Intel utility and it didn't take?

I followed the command prompts that WHS posted and when all was completed i hooked up my external drive to the computer and tried to install a system image that i had made with Win 7 system image maker a few days ago .

When advanced options screen and command prompt came up i went with the system image and it was not recognized.

I followed this exact as described:

. Replace the HDD with the SSD

2. Use command prompt from any Windows installation or recovery disc and define an aligned primary active partition on the SSD. The commands are:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk)
Clean
Create partition primary align=1024
Format fs=ntfs quick
Active
Exit

3. Restore the image you have into that partition.

Did you shut down the computer before hooking up the external hard drive? Does the program see the backup image at all or does it fail after starting the process? Maybe shut down the PC, plug in the hard drive, reboot and see if it gets recognized that way. I still don't understand how you tried to restore the image, but this may be beyond my knowledge because I've only used the Intel utility itself to restore an image.

WHS, what do you think, any suggestions?

janitoronmars said:

Did you shut down the computer before hooking up the external hard drive? Does the program see the backup image at all or does it fail after starting the process? Maybe shut down the PC, plug in the hard drive, reboot and see if it gets recognized that way. I still don't understand how you tried to restore the image, but this may be beyond my knowledge because I've only used the Intel utility itself to restore an image.

WHS, what do you think, any suggestions?

Windows found the external hard drive like it always has. Thats not the problem , the problem is when i chose what image to restore and clicked to start the process thats when it can't find the image.

I used a system repair disk to get into windows since the new SSD was installed but had nothing on it .