Upgrade HDD to SSD for Dell Inspiron 5558

Question

I have a Dell Inspiron 5558 with following configuration.

• Intel Core i5 5250U 1.6GHz
• 8GB RAM
• NVidia 920M 4GB
• Windows 10 Updated to latest stable
• 1TB 5400 RPM WD HDD

Now the problem is, I can't use my laptops full potential due to limited read-write speed of HDD. To solve it, I want to upgrade my HDD to SSD.

1. Is my laptop compatible to upgrade to SSD ?
2. What dimensions of SSD will be compatible ?
3. Which SSD will be best ?

Kindly help me upgrade my rig. Thanks :)

Answer 1

Please note, this is answer is for the Dell Inspiron 15-5558, which hopefully is the same as the OP has.

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Is my laptop compatible to upgrade to SSD ?

Yes, as you can see in the following picture, the drive positioning was clearly designed to make the drive easily replacable. ^{source: NotebookCheck.com (German)}

What dimensions of SSD will be compatible ?

The article from which the image is, claims that a Toshiba MQ01ABD100 is used which is a 2.5 inch HDD, therefore you need a (standard) 2.5 inch SATA-SSD.

Which SSD will be best ?

My default recommendation here is the Samsung SSD 850 Evo 1TB for 340USD on amazon.com.

There are two reasons to pick a different drive:

• You want to write a lot to your drive, that is more than 60-80GB on average per day for the next few years, then you want to use the Pro version of the above SSD which while having the same write-limit warranty, uses SSD technology more resistant to overwrite damage (MLC vs TLC).
• You don't want to pay as much because you don't need as much storage, in which case you can simply go with a smaller drive (they come in the full range from 256GB to 4TB).

Answer 2

Yes you can, because they are just hard drive without a magnetic disk and spindle. They all are of same size 2.5", which can easily fit in your laptops HDD housing.

If you've got DVD drive and you feel its not much used then get a DVD SSD Caddy. They come in 2 sizes which depends on your laptop. Bigger one sizes 12.7mm and the smaller sizes 9.5mm. This will allow you to run both the hardisks parallel.

I got Acer 5830TG, loaded with 6gigs of ram, core i5, nvidia GT540m, Samsung EVO 850 120 GB as primary and Seagate 500 GB as secondary.

Samsung EVO 850 is good in R/W performance. This one is a TLC flash equipped. Which can make a write of limit up to 95 TB but in this competition others stops at ~30 TB . At the same time other SSD manufacturers TLC's write speed performance can bring to their knees. They only go up to 30-90mb, hardly to reach the highest peak. But Samsung provides 500+ mb speed performance in R/W both. Which averages to 250mb to 300mb. That's really a great performance as compared to its competitor's in TLC range.

we can push our self to spend extra bucks to get a quality product. :-)