HDD swap out

[Whitebits]

Hi All,

I find this forum incredibly difficult to use and am a member of many other forums (for years) so that's saying something!

I have a SVE1713C5E with a 320GB HDD it has an i7 and 8GB RAM (1600MHz) which I use for making computer music.

My sample library of sounds and software is over 200GB and now I have approx 50GB of HDD space left my machine is taking longer to boot than my work HP 4530s running Win 7 (with a worse processor and 4GB RAM 1066MHz).

I need to replace the HDD with a larger option but as I have heavy system load while creating music I need to move over to SSD (not an option during the build) and also upgrade to 16GB of RAM, while the RAM is straightforward enough I gotta say just taking out the HDD and using True Image makes me nervous.

I've seen posts on here that state you need to tweak the BIOS to replace the HDD with SDD, SONY have stripped down the BIOS functions to make this hard, Windows 8 came pre-installed and I don't have a recovery disk if it all goes wrong or access to my copy of Win 8 adn to top it all off there is no full manual for this machine.

In all honesty I've never felt left out in the cold so much or treated like an incompetant so much by a company, Sony really are protecting the stupid at the cost of people that wish to upgrade, I don't like this "nanny state" we control everything and give you nothing ethos they seem to have with regards to customers wishing to upgrade.

Can anyone help???

[jumpsuit]

Hi there and welcome to the Community

Your frustration is understandable however I do hope when you say "Sony really are protecting the stupid" you are not referring to those people / members here that  assessed how much memory they would need in the future and bought a laptop without the urge to ever open it up, void warranties, swap out hardware and risk bricking their machine.

If so I'm not sure how many will want to reply to this thread.

[Whitebits]

Cheers jumpsuit,

I'd like to take this ooportunity to make one thing clear at no point was I intending to offend any Sony forum member or owner. My frustration sincerely comes out of the deliberate lack of help for people in my situation.

I whole heartedly offer apologies if anyone did feel offended that was certainly not my intent.

Now back to the machine. To answer your statement about members fully speccing correctly at build that isn't always the case bud, everyone's situation is unique. I was caught out by my desktop machine blowing the motherboard due to overheating. I only had enough money to purchase the spec machine I purchased, which I had to purchase quick as I was working on several projects for other people, I looked at every manufacturer for the money I had available at the time and this was the highest spec avilable for the £££.

I needed the spec and had to make a choice to sacrifice storage knowing it would become a problem later down the line, I also knew that the RAM would eventually need swapping, but for me this is not an issue.

Regards warranty no manufacturer is allowed to void your warranty by using 3rd party hardware, let me make this clear I work in IT distribution selling 3rd party IT hardware - it is against the law to suggest this. Of course any company can refuse to work on a machine with 3rd party hardware in it, the simplest is to remove at the first sign of a problem - issue solved.

The RAM is not the issue I get this at cost, however SSD is a hurdle, it seems that putting one in has some special BIOS reset requirements and finding info or even a simple manual is virtually impossible, I've done swaps for SSD (on work laptops) using Acronis True Image and not needed to do anything within the BIOS, this is why I'm nervous, it just seems Sony machines need a tweak and I can't find out the tweak info.

I would love to know if my machine has 2 hard drive slots so that I could mirror or RAID the devices. I would also love to know the profile height 7mm or 9.5mm, voltage specs (where poss) and also where I can get a back up for my Windows 8.1??? It bugs me that you only get a vanilla install version.

I am seriously frustrated by the lack of information, my issue is that in 20+ years of computing most manufacturers give you freedom of information on manuals, upgrading RAM, peripherals etc. It appears SONY have decided to go a little more down the Apple route of lockdown all options after manufacture, that simply doesn't wash with me.

If anyone knows info or where I can get info I would be very grateful.

[DaNNeS_83]

It feels good when you spent $300 on a SSD which you can't reuse since the PS4 makes it a one-time-disposable.... Only place I can see my SSD is in discmanagment, I can't see it in the explorer (Not IE) or Samsung Magician.

Give me a fix, pronto Sony!

BR // [sic]

[Whitebits]

cheers DaNNeS please anyone with information can they chip in I am running out of space and my machine is about to fall over 😞

[MK_Slinky]

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@DaNNeS_83 wrote:

It feels good when you spent $300 on a SSD which you can't reuse since the PS4 makes it a one-time-disposable.... Only place I can see my SSD is in discmanagment, I can't see it in the explorer (Not IE) or Samsung Magician.

Give me a fix, pronto Sony!

BR // [sic]

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Forgive me if I am misunderstanding you but the only time you should experience what you describe is when you first install a new hard drive. The drive will be visible in Disc Manager however it will not be visible in Explorer until you have first initialized the drive ready for use and created a partition on it. When creating the partition you will also need to format it as NTFS although you can also choose FAT32 (NTFS support longer file names)

Obviously only having your paragraph above doesn't give us the full picture. Have you already initialized the drive and formatted and created a partition yet???