Just thought I'd report back on this buy.
Arrived in double quick time. Beautiful finish in black, pity you can't see it once installed.
Supplied with usb key to link to the software downloads, the WD special edition of Acronis and the WD software to open the 1tb partition after installing the SSD partition. Included was a very high quality double USB (power / data) to sata cable. (I thought it was faulty at one stage)
The WD unlock part had me confused, why would they need that? Found that out as I will explain in a bit.
Initially the SSD did not show in This PC (my computer), I am running Win 8.1 BTW but it did in Disk Management. Formatted to NTFS and then showed up in My PC. OK.
I tried three times to install the WD Acronis but failed to get it to install. It required at least 1 WD device connected!! Hello!! After some messing with another cable it did install, but in the interim I had just cloned my old C: using the clone function in Macrium Reflect, in fact I was talking with Joe at one stage and he mention MR as a try. Well it worked fine! I saved all data from C: and resized to 105gb from the old 300gb partition. Sweet as a nut. Could not get the WD software to work from the old drive to access the 1tb partition. Now I know why. It is to prevent an accidental write to it either by clone or fresh install.
Had a small libation.
Ok
The installation was to include a RAM upgrade on this PD Pavilion 15 to 16gb from 8gb. To access the HDD and the ram slots requires the whole machine to come apart and the keyboard disconnected, to access the ram slots requires the MB to come "up" so I only wanted to do this once!!
Disassembling was easier than I thought (I did cheat and found an online video first, a wise move.
Replaced the dual drive with ease, inserted the Crucial 8gb 1600 in slot 2.
Had another small whisky. Connected needed cables, enough to aallow a boot before putting 27 odd screws back(!)
Fingers crossed, legs crossed and feeling well crossed, booted the machine.
Lo and behold, system booted into windows, 55 secs first boot (I assume a registry change?)and desktop as was appeared.
Ran the WD unlocker, instant 1TB found / unlocked.
Rebooted and 20secs to desktop and after many other 'boots' average time is around 15 to 20. Very acceptable, having used SSDs before I know that will vary given for instance MS updates etc or after a system cleanup.
Anyway that sorts the boot time, but what about the increased performance if any?
Well, Cyberfox and Waterfox open before I hit the icons!! Opening apps are definitely quicker and can run in the background without effort.
So,
in summation, was the initial purchase worthwhile?
Yes, based on the above price for the drive, the way I use my PC, then I have no issues.
Don't forget, many laptops have easier access to the HDD and RAM without the AGGRO I hadBelow are the new specs
Now I hope this helps, remember many laptops have easier access panels, not all are complicated to take apart