Add an NVMe SSD

[CrystalWizard]

I was given a Dell 7550 with a 1.8G i7 8th gen CPU, 16G RAM, an spinning rust HDD, a 17" screen and lighted keypad. This is an improvement over my current daily driver (an old Dell i3.
I have a 256G NVMe, there's an NVMe slot in the machine. I'd like to leave the HDD but make the SSD the system drive.
That means:
Tell windoze 10 there's another drive installed
Format it
Clone the HDD to the SSD
Then ?
Tell windoze to switch the drive letters?'
Or tell the bios to boot from the SSD?

Lastly, i'm wondering, how much of an improvement will this machine (8th gen 1.8G, 16G RAM) be over my trusty old Dell 6520 (2nd or 3rd gen 2.6G i7 with 8G RAM) be? Obviously the extra RAM is better but how about the slower, newer CPU?
I'm going to use both (and two other machines), so i will eventually find out.
Thanks

[Kaine]

Clone the HDD to the SSD
Then ?
Tell windoze to switch the drive letters?'
Or tell the bios to boot from the SSD?

Win10 onwards, the OS drive you are working within will always set itself as the C:\ drive.
You need to set it to boot into the SSD within the BIOS, the OS should do the rest.

Lastly, i'm wondering, how much of an improvement will this machine (8th gen 1.8G, 16G RAM) be over my trusty old Dell 6520 (2nd or 3rd gen 2.6G i7 with 8G RAM) be? Obviously the extra RAM is better but how about the slower, newer CPU?

What are the respective chip model numbers? Googling the Dell model, it suggests it's a laptop, but wiki on the chip gen/speed suggests it's a desktop chip, so none of that is lining up.

[CrystalWizard]

Clone the HDD to the SSD
Then ?
Tell windoze to switch the drive letters?'
Or tell the bios to boot from the SSD?

Win10 onwards, the OS drive you are working within will always set itself as the C:\ drive.
You need to set it to boot into the SSD within the BIOS, the OS should do the rest."

oh ok, thanks

Lastly, i'm wondering, how much of an improvement will this machine (8th gen 1.8G, 16G RAM) be over my trusty old Dell 6520 (2nd or 3rd gen 2.6G i7 with 8G RAM) be? Obviously the extra RAM is better but how about the slower, newer CPU?

What are the respective chip model numbers? Googling the Dell model, it suggests it's a laptop, but wiki on the chip gen/speed suggests it's a desktop chip, so none of that is lining up.

i7 8550u vs i72620 both laptops. Doesn't really matter, just curious

[CrystalWizard]

Clone the HDD to the SSD
Then ?
Tell windoze to switch the drive letters?'
Or tell the bios to boot from the SSD?

Win10 onwards, the OS drive you are working within will always set itself as the C:\ drive.
You need to set it to boot into the SSD within the BIOS, the OS should do the rest.

Lastly, i'm wondering, how much of an improvement will this machine (8th gen 1.8G, 16G RAM) be over my trusty old Dell 6520 (2nd or 3rd gen 2.6G i7 with 8G RAM) be? Obviously the extra RAM is better but how about the slower, newer CPU?

What are the respective chip model numbers? Googling the Dell model, it suggests it's a laptop, but wiki on the chip gen/speed suggests it's a desktop chip, so none of that is lining up.

Thanks, i did all of what i listed minus telling Win to change the letters (and formated it). Win10 didn't change the drive letters but it boots from the SSD now so it's good.

[Wyrmrot]

Congrats on the upgrade! NVME has been an amazing change. SATA SSD's are pretty awesome too, and I still use one as a third storage drive, but I have everything else running off two NVME drives. No regrets.

[Kaine]

i7 8550u vs i72620 both laptops. Doesn't really matter, just curious

Ahh, sorry, rather late response as I missed this.

8550 : Multicore 5905 / Single Core 2049
2620 : Multicore 2423 / Single Core 1459

Even despite the lower base clock the newer setup likely has a higher IPC rating being more recent silicon, so a nice boost to the single core result (how much you can do on a channel/chain) along with a healthy doubling of the overall available performance. In the grand scale of things, both models are relatively light weight, but if they can keep up with your needs overall then that's all that matters.

[CrystalWizard]

update: Kaine you were correct, WIN10 changed the drive letters some time after i installed the NVMe. It's true both machines are lightweight but on the occasion i need to run a lot of synths i just use two machines. During live gigs i used to do this just for redundancy.
Wyrmrot, Yes, NVMe is the way to go, i may have to upgrade from the 256G to 2TB sometime soon. (the D drive [2TB] is spinning rust and 5600rpm at that). Maybe i will even replace that with a SATA SSD.
I have a newerish Razer 15 from 2020, i just added a 2TB NVMe as a second drive (the primary drive is 500G).
I haven't installed much music software on it (the Dell i7 8th gen) yet but it can handle some rather large VCV Rack patches easily, likely more than my old dell(s) i7 3rd gen.
Sooner or later i need to upgrade...