I am looking at either getting a 240GB M500 which is going for a pretty good price right now, or a 250GB 810 EVO. I am leaning towards the EVO even though it is a bit more expensive solely because it is faster (from the benchmarks that I've seen).If you have any sort of input on that, feel free to throw in your thoughts.
Now on to my real question. How should I go about moving my W8.1 install from my current HDD to the new SDD? I want the most straightforward and foolproof method as I don't really have time to mess around with things to get them to work or time to reinstall the OS again. My schedule is pretty packed as is. I COULD do a fresh install if needed, but I would really rather not. Also, I would prefer to not use a live disc like clonezilla if possible as the last time that I used clonezilla, it crashed and my OS stopped being bootable (I decided to just go with a fresh install then because I had had the previous one for a while by then and because I had a bit more time on my hands than I do now).
A clean install is the best option but if you don't have the time you should be able to create a system image (my understanding is you can do this using Windows' backup software) 'restore' the system image to the SSD then swap boot order in the BIOS and you should be good to go.
I use Acronis True Image. I use the Clone Disk Tool, and move the data from one HDD to the other. Works without issues (Windows7, Windows8 & Server2008 R2). If you search the net, you can often find some Promo codes to get a discount on the price. There is a 30 day free trial, but I do not know what the limitations are, if the Clone Disk Tool is available in the trial version you could use that.
The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.
Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet.
Online imaging/cloning is not implemented yet. The partition to be imaged or cloned has to be unmounted.
Software RAID/fake RAID/firmware RAID is not supported by default. It can be done manually only.
Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image. However, you still have workaround to make it, read this.
Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to create the recovery iso file.
These features are something that you will get in Acronis (for example), I did a Disc Clone from my Raid1 HDD (100GB partition) on my server, to a single SSD disk (80 GB) without any issues. Acronis can re-size the partitions automatically/proportionally.
Of course if the budget does not allow, and the free version can do the job, it is a good alternative.