Death is never easy.  We’ve all had to deal with the loss of a loved one, a mentor, a co-worker, etc.  Today, the Geeks to Go family has to deal with the loss of a colleague, known online as SpySentinel.  SpySentinel was a malware helper here, and in the past year became a mod.  He was a respected member of our staff, and his death leaves a big hole in our hearts. In real life, he was a college student.  He started his college career in the computing field, but realized it wasn’t where his heart was.  He changed his major to elementary education, and was looking forward to becoming a teacher and mentor to young children.  He would have succeeded, had he had the opportunity.

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Do you have an SSD or Solid State Drive on your Christmas list? Maybe hoping Santa leaves an SSD in your stocking? SSDs are currently the number one way to increase the performance of your system. Instead of using a physical platter that must be read and written, using an arm much like an LP record album, SSDs are solid state. Only electrons move. Chances are I’m speaking to the choir. If you’re reading this article, you probably  know the benefits of SSD.

There are many guides to installing SSD drives, but most of them are outdated. If you’re using Windows 7, you don’t need to change a bunch of settings. Windows 7 will recognize the SSD, and change them for you. SSDs have about the same failure rate as traditional hard drives, and modern SSDs don’t require all kinds of exotic changes to your operating system to protect them. Chances are the only change you need to make is in your BIOS. Just make sure drive is set to use ACHI and not IDE.

Probably the most painful part of installing an SSD is performing a clean install of Windows. Now Paragon Migrate OS to SSD has a simple solution to that problem as well. As the name suggests, it will help you migrate your existing Windows installation to your new SSD. Retaining all your Windows settings, avoiding reinstall of your software.

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