Silicon Power S60 240GB SSD Upgrade Kit Review

Is your old PC slowing down? Do you feel that your laptop is a slow as molasses? Maybe it’s time to upgrade that old spinning hard drive to a newer and faster SSD. If you’re afraid of the upgrade process then perhaps getting an upgrade kit is the way to go. I decided to upgrade my old 128GB SSD on my Asus laptop to the SP S60 240GB SSD. Once again, let’s see if I made the right decision and hopefully I’m able to share some pointers on the whole process.

Specs:

-    Clone, transfer and install. Immediate upgrade your notebook/desktop in 3 simple steps

-       Includes a SATA III Slim S60 SSD, rugged HDD enclosure, cloning software, screws, a screwdriver, 7mm to 9mm adapter

-        Slim type 7mm SSD, ideal for Ultra Slim Notebook Upgrade

-  Armor A30 rugged HDD enclosure for protection against shock, scratches and abrasions

-        3-year warranty

-        US$ 80 from Amazon

Installation

Since this is the second time I replaced the hard drive of my laptop, I had a fairly easy time opening up and replacing it. But before we get into that, the kit comes with an external case so that you can use your old disk as an external USB drive. However, if you want to clone your existing hard drive then you’ll need to install the new SSD in it first, connect it via USB and fire up the cloning software. The cloning software (NTI Echo 3) is part of the package but you’ll need to download and activate it. By the way, the license code for the cloning software is located in the manual, it’s small, hard to read and the codes are confusing (lots of zeros and letter O).

Everything went well up until I started the cloning process. I would always get an error at about 8%. I tried so many times that it took almost the whole day trying to troubleshoot the problem. I contacted Silicon Power’s tech support but by the time they responded to my inquiry, I had already downloaded a different free cloning software (Drive Clone Free) which worked right away. Finally I was able to use my new SSD.

Everything you need is in the box

My error message 

Performance and Conclusion

After going through the frustration of the cloning process, I finally had it installed and working. All my old files were cloned properly. Boot-up was fast. But since I already had an SSD I didn’t really notice much difference. Read/Write speeds were slower than advertised but still fast enough for my needs. There are a lot of comments on Amazon that says Silicon Power switched to a different chip manufacturer to save cost and that’s the reason for the slower speeds. But the average person won’t really notice. I’m still undecided if getting an upgrade is worth it, as I found out the hard way that there are cloning software that you can get for free. It is very easy to buy an external USB drive enclosure and I’m sure you have a screwdriver somewhere in your house.

The Good:

-        Price

-        Complete kit

-        External USB Enclosure

-        Tech support was helpful

-    3-Year warranty

The Bad:

-        Speed is slower than advertised (still fast enough for me)

-        Cloning software didn’t work