g75vw-bbk5 best buy version question

[revan299s]

Hello, I currently have the best buy version of the g75vw-bbk5, which means I only have 1 HDD.

I would like to add an SSD and have that as my OS/application drive. Would I be able to do that and retain all of my Recovery data?

If so, are there any SSD drives you would recommend?

Thanks.

[lilfoot95]

I believe when you reinstall your OS it creates a new recovery partition on whatever drive you installed the OS on.

[Hidy_Ho]

I have just done this and it's PITA (win 8 preinstalled) as there isn't really good tool to clone the drive and there is no win 8 disk with the purchase to do a fresh install. I tried bunch of software and nothing seems to work to clone the drive. I think the best method is to do a fresh install and I finally got hold of win 8 DVD and did a fresh install. Before doing so, you'd need to google some tool that will extract the existing license information to use for the fresh install (I used Belarc Advisor).

You'll need to be good at F2 pressing to get to the BIOS to change the boot option as sometimes the system boots too fast to get to the BIOS.

I purchased Crucial 256GB SSD as I've never had bad experience using their memories before. Your own research might find you better SSD but I'm OK with my decision for now.

[rewben]

if you have a bbk5 that comes with windows 7 and you happened to have the updated version of AI Recovery, then it should be good to go:

1. follow this thread to create the recovery set.
2. swap your new SSD with the HDD and use the recovery discs on the SSD. take out the HDD physically to avoid potential complications.

as for SSDs, it's a matter of personal preference and budget. my personal choices are intel 520 and samsung 830.

[rewben]

@Hidy Ho,
1. there are some differences between win7- and win8-based g75's.
2. the steps to get the product key, plus many other FAQ's have been addressed in ASUS's support page.
3. we have users reported that Acronis 2012 and above could clone GPT disks nicely.

yes, crucial m4 is a nice SSD.

[steeefyyy]

rewben wrote:
@Hidy Ho,
1. there are some differences between win7- and win8-based g75's.
2. the steps to get the product key, plus many other FAQ's have been addressed in ASUS's support page.
3. we have users reported that Acronis 2012 and above could clone GPT disks nicely.

yes, crucial m4 is a nice SSD.

Hi, my laptop is a asus g75vw, im thinking its time to put a ssd, so i want to know which one to buy, can you help me ??? could this one work -> Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT256MX100SSD1 ?

thank you so much

[Hidy_Ho]

I specially pointed out that mine had win 8 preinstalled. I have no personal experience with Win 7 machines. Acronis 2013 didn't work for me. It cloned and then errored on reboot.

[rewben]

Hidy Ho, have you installed the plus pack for Acronis 2013? from the knowledge base, Acronis states that it supports it 😕

[chili_red1]

I just did this two weeks ago with my BB G75 with Windows 8 preinstalled. It was a pain to figure out but I got it done and simple too.
I installed a Intel 520 180gb drive in the second bay, straight out of the box and did nothing to it. Then I used NTI Echo to copy the drive over. After it was finished I put that drive in bay 1 and removed the oem drive and booted into windows just fine.
I then put the 1tb drive back into bay two, booted into the bios and made sure that the Intel SSD drive was the boot drive and booted back into windows. I then went into disk management and deleted the main partition of the second OEM 1tb drive, leaving the recovery partition on the old drive just in case, recreated the partition and formatted it. Everything has been working perfectly since.

You can get NTI Echo directly from their website,
http://www.nticorp.com/en/us/product/echo_2.asp
I used the trial version but I found a coupon doing a google search and got it for $10 which is well worth it because it's the only one I found that would actually copy over the Windows 8 drive without any problems and was super easy to use.

[revan299s]

Thanks everyone. It seems the easiest way may be with AI recovery, since that restores the recovery partition even on new drives. Unless I am reading it wrong.

only issue I have is I cant seem to download the latest version. I tried from Asus but it asks me to select my OS. When I click the drop down menu theres nothing there. Tried with both IE and Firefox. Anyone know how to fix this or an alternate download?

Thanks.