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Possible to replace HDD with SSD in Aspire budget PC?

motesoul
By motesoul
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If it has room fora HDD, it has room for an SSD.  As for getting to it, worst case you will void the warranty, but if they put it together, you can take it apart :P

 

I would say it is worth it.  She only needs a $50 120 GB SSD, and you could always carry that forward to another PC in the future if necessary

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My grandmother bought an Acer Aspire PC a couple years ago, and is still only using about 20GB of the 930GB of storage. She often turns the computer on and off (even though I explained that she doesn't have to), so I asked her if she would be interested in replacing the drive with a smaller faster one and she said yes.

 

Is it even possible to replace the hard drive in these compact towers? Should I get 128GB or 256 just in case? Is it worth it to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading an old tower? I haven't even taken the thing apart yet. I've heard PC building is like Lego except you have to ground yourself, but like compact cars, I wonder if replacements will be impossible due to packaging.

Alternatively, is there a compact PC on the market (Specifically BC, Canada) with a small SSD and a good (real i5 or better) processor and more graphics than none at all? Sorry if this is completely the wrong place to post this.

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If it has room fora HDD, it has room for an SSD.  As for getting to it, worst case you will void the warranty, but if they put it together, you can take it apart :P

 

I would say it is worth it.  She only needs a $50 120 GB SSD, and you could always carry that forward to another PC in the future if necessary

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2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

If it has room fora HDD, it has room for an SSD.  As for getting to it, worst case you will void the warranty, but if they put it together, you can take it apart :P

 

I would say it is worth it.  She only needs a $50 120 GB SSD, and you could always carry that forward to another PC in the future if necessary

Thank you for the reply. The PC tower says "AMD A6". Does being AMD rather than intel make a difference in terms of compatibility?

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1 minute ago, motesoul said:

Thank you for the reply. The PC tower says "AMD A6". Does being AMD rather than intel make a difference in terms of compatibility?

No.  Depending how old it is it's possible it's SATA II, in which case you won't get the maximum potential sequential read and write speeds from the SSD, but it would still be worth it since it would still be a significant improvement, and the big difference comes from better random performance, not sequential.

Solve your own audio issues  |  First Steps with RPi 3  |  Humidity & Condensation  |  Sleep & Hibernation  |  Overclocking RAM  |  Making Backups  |  Displays  |  4K / 8K / 16K / etc.  |  Do I need 80+ Platinum?

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22 minutes ago, motesoul said:

Is it even possible to replace the hard drive in these compact towers?

Easily. If there's a 3.5" drive bay, there's a place for a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter bracket or, if you're cool, a 2.5" SSD zip-tied and/or velcroed into place.

I enjoy buying junk and sinking more money than it's worth into it to make it less junk.

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How about powering the SSD? Will I need to buy a power cable?

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Just now, motesoul said:

How about powering the SSD? Will I need to buy a power cable?

The existing drive should be using Sata power, if so no need for anything else, but if the existing drive is so old somehow that it's molex you will need an adapter

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1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The existing drive should be using Sata power, if so no need for anything else, but if the existing drive is so old somehow that it's molex you will need an adapter

The PC is only a couple years old, it was just cheap ($500CDN at best buy). I think I will be buying a sandisk sata 3 drive.

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Just now, motesoul said:

The PC is only a couple years old, it was just cheap ($500CDN at best buy). I think I will be buying a sandisk sata 3 drive.

It should just plug right in then, and work at full speed.

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Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

It should just plug right in then, and work at full speed.

Thanks so much! I did the "How long does it take to restart and get to facebook" test with my laptop and she was pretty convinced.

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Just now, motesoul said:

Thanks so much! I did the "How long does it take to restart and get to facebook" test with my laptop and she was pretty convinced.

Yeah that should make a big difference, and one that increases over time since the SSD will remain fast but Windows installs on HDDs tend to just bog down to unusable levels over time through no fault of the hardware itself

Solve your own audio issues  |  First Steps with RPi 3  |  Humidity & Condensation  |  Sleep & Hibernation  |  Overclocking RAM  |  Making Backups  |  Displays  |  4K / 8K / 16K / etc.  |  Do I need 80+ Platinum?

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