Quick laptop upgrading storage question

[DanteK]

Hey. I'm planning on upgrading the hard drives on my laptop in a few days, and ive ordered an intel 730 240gb ssd, as well as a WD green 2TB 2.5" hdd
I think I'll leave one of my existing hard drives and maybe move it to my optical bay, so i also ordered a caddy for that.
So i'll be left with the ssd and the WD drive inside the laptop, and one of my 500 gig current drives in the optical bay slot.
Do you think this will cause me any problems with power consumption or performance/heat output? I don't care about battery life, my laptop is plugged into mains 100% of time, but I heard that the intel ssd drains a lot of power. Order hasnt been dispatched so I can still cancel or replace stuff.
I maybe shouldve got a samsung 850, but they were same price as intel one and i think the intel should be more reliable since im planning on also using it when i upgrade laptop in a year or so.
Also, would I have to do anything in the bios or just replace the drives and install windows on the ssd?
Just in case you need more info, laptop is msi gx660r stock with an i7 720 qm

[LemonSpice]

Hey. I'm planning on upgrading the hard drives on my laptop in a few days, and ive ordered an intel 730 240gb ssd, as well as a WD green 2TB 2.5" hdd

I think I'll leave one of my existing hard drives and maybe move it to my optical bay, so i also ordered a caddy for that.

So i'll be left with the ssd and the WD drive inside the laptop, and one of my 500 gig current drives in the optical bay slot.

Do you think this will cause me any problems with power consumption or performance/heat output? I don't care about battery life, my laptop is plugged into mains 100% of time, but I heard that the intel ssd drains a lot of power. Order hasnt been dispatched so I can still cancel or replace stuff.

I maybe shouldve got a samsung 850, but they were same price as intel one and i think the intel should be more reliable since im planning on also using it when i upgrade laptop in a year or so.

Also, would I have to do anything in the bios or just replace the drives and install windows on the ssd?

Just in case you need more info, laptop is msi gx660r stock with an i7 720 qm

no it will reduce it very minor

[Laputacake]

Go for the samsung 850 pro if you can. As far as im concerned there some of the bests ssds you can get. Also SSDs use less power than hdds so you shouldn't have any problems. Also you wont have to do anything to the bios you'll just be able to install ssd and then throw windows on it

[TheRetiredSlave]

Does your laptop have 2.5" bays that are tall enough for the 2 TB WD Green? I know it's technically a 2.5" drive, but it's substantially taller than most normal 2.5" drives (7 or 9mm tall). 

 

As for your other questions: 

The power consumption of an SSD is very small compared to a HDD. Since storage drives are such a small percentage of a laptop's power use (most will be used on CPU/GPU/Screen), there won't be any substantial difference in power use. Heat output won't matter.

You may need to check the BIOS to put the drive in AHCI mode before you install the OS onto the SSD. You shouldn't need to do anything else in the BIOS.

[DanteK]

Well i can change it for the 850, but for £1 difference i think the 730 would be more worth. The read speeds are more or less the same, and overall performance shouldnt be too different.
For the WD, i dunno ive honestly been too lazy to check, but if not it should fit in the optical bay caddy

[DanteK]

Opened up laptop, there's plenty of space for the WD green to sit there, current drives are wd black scorpios but one has around 1cm of breathing room above it so should be fine. Thanks anyway for replies.

[R2D2_WD]

Hi, @DanteK

 

In general, the WD Green is not recommended to be used in laptops. It is designed for PCs and custom external enclosures. The drive is noticeably higher than other drives. Have that in mind.

Talking about performance/heat it is hard to determine if a SSD will outperform a RAID0. I would encourage you to to use SSD +HDD, mainly because RAID0 provides no data safety. Switching the SSD to AHCI mode was a good advice.

If you manage to put the WD Green drive in the laptop, combined with the SSD it should produce less heat, compared with the RAID0 drives.

 

http://goo.gl/hlKzO7 – more details about the WD Green

 

Hope this helps