SanDisk makes a great SSD as well, and it's quite a bit cheaper than Samsung's. You most likely won't notice the speed difference.

http://ssdendurancetest.com/


When it comes to disk images I can confirm that CloneZilla is a good software. I use it myself.

In order to create a disk image of default Windows installation you will have to make a fresh installation to your HDD disk with windows recovery option. The disk will be formatted and all data on it lost.

Then you will need to create disk image and restore it to the SSD later on. You could also try cloning it directly from disk to disk without creating an image, but then you won't have the file to use in the future.

Another option is to clone just the recovery partition to the SSD and start windows recover from there. Recovery partition itself is nothing else than a disk image. Then again, you would need to be careful with choosing the disk you want your computer to boot from, preferably change the BIOS boot settings so that you accidentally don't recover windows on the HDD disk.

Also, you can install a fresh copy of Windows with a Windows 8.1 .iso file and then use activation code from the sticker - this option requires manual installation of drivers from Asus' website.

As far as I know, Windows 8.1 allows downloading .iso file through Microsoft's website as long as you provide activation code. Microsoft's software automatically creates either Live USB or Windows CD.

Nonetheless, if you'd like to keep your installed games and data you could just try cloning the HDD to SSD disk and see if that works.

cosmicmango wrote:
If you're not going to do a clean install of Windows 8.1 the easiest way to load the SSD is with Asus Backtracker, you can download from the link below.

Download and install the program, you will need a 16GB flash drive, if there’s data on the drive make sure you back it up because everything will be deleted during the installation process.

When its finish shut down your system and swap out the HDD with the SSD, plug in the flash drive, turn the power on and the installation will start. When it is finish it will put everything as it was right out of the box. Then just put the HDD in the second bay.

http://www.asus.com/supportonly/ASUS%20Backtracker/HelpDesk_Download/

Thanks, but I wanna ask tho, what if I already installed softwares and tinker with the settings, will the Backtracker still put everything as it was right out of the box? Because it's too late to create an out of the box image from my laptop.

bearyfishy wrote:
Thanks, but I wanna ask tho, what if I already installed softwares and tinker with the settings, will the Backtracker still put everything as it was right out of the box? Because it's too late to create an out of the box image from my laptop.

You can still use Backtracker to load the SSD as long as you haven’t deleted the Recovery partitions, but you will have to install all your other programs on the SSD.

cosmicmango wrote:
You can still use Backtracker to load the SSD as long as you haven’t deleted the Recovery partitions, but you will have to install all your other programs on the SSD.

Thanks. I will try it out as soon as I get my SSD.