How can I swap out HDD for SSD

[lone shooter]

So, I have a laptop that not too old which has a HDD that I wish to swap out for an SSD. I bought the laptop new and it can with a recovery CD but not an OEM Win8 disc.

I'm currently running Win10. How would I swap this this HDD? Do I image the HDD, clone it, or ?

The laptop does NOT have a CD drive btw.

Looking to get a little more zip to this thing.

TIA

[therealnickb]

If some one else doesn't chime in, I'll have a link for you a little later.

I found a kit online an simple instructions. The swap made my old dell pretty snappy.

[lone shooter]

Thanks.

[SkyHawk]

Go for it - there is no better upgrade for the money. And it will literally change your life if you use your PC a lot.

Clone the drive. It is a bit more of a pain without a CD drive but not much. You can make a bootable USB stick drive.

This is what I do:

1. Get ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE (there are other free programs, but I really like Acronis)

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

2. Get an EXTERNAL HDD box w/USB cable

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XWRRMYX/

3. Get/borrow a USB thumb drive

4. Use Acronis to make a bootable USB thumb drive with the Acronis software on board

5. Shut down computer

6. Mount the SSD into the external box and attach to computer

7. Boot computer to USB thumb drive (Acronis)

8. Use Acronis to make clone from old HDD to new SSD, resizing the partition up or down on the fly as needed

9. Power off PC

10. Remove SSD from external USB box

11. Remove old hard drive from computer

12. Install new SSD into computer

13. Enjoy a whole new, faster experience with your computer

[lone shooter]

^ thanks SH.

HDD is on upper right.

[Kwikvette]

Been on SSD's for a few years now and I'll never go back to HDD; it's that good.

[therealnickb]

^ thanks SH.

HDD is on upper right.

Max out your ram while it's open. Should be pretty cheap.

[lone shooter]

Been on SSD's for a few years now and I'll never go back to HDD; it's that good.

Yeah, my 4 year old I7 desktop has one and I love it. The laptop was a hand me down when the wife got a MS Surface. The laptop is actually not that bad, I believe it's an I3 and not a Celeron.

Yeah, it has one stick of 4GB DDRL3-1600 RAM and accepts 16GB. Believe it or not, the SDD is cheaper then 16 GBs of RAM. I'll start with the SSD and move on from there.

Thanks again.

[therealnickb]

Cool. You'll definitely get the most noticeable performance increase from the SSD. I'd add at least another 4gb of ram for win 10 though. That can't cost much.

[Marauder2003]

Don’t use Best Buy Geek Squad.

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2018/03/07/best-buy-geek-squad-fbi/

[Kestryll]

Go for it - there is no better upgrade for the money. And it will literally change your life if you use your PC a lot.

Clone the drive. It is a bit more of a pain without a CD drive but not much. You can make a bootable USB stick drive.

This is what I do:

1. Get ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE (there are other free programs, but I really like Acronis)

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

2. Get an EXTERNAL HDD box w/USB cable

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XWRRMYX/

3. Get/borrow a USB thumb drive

4. Use Acronis to make a bootable USB thumb drive with the Acronis software on board

5. Shut down computer

6. Mount the SSD into the external box and attach to computer

7. Boot computer to USB thumb drive (Acronis)

8. Use Acronis to make clone from old HDD to new SSD, resizing the partition up or down on the fly as needed

9. Power off PC

10. Remove SSD from external USB box

11. Remove old hard drive from computer

12. Install new SSD into computer

13. Enjoy a whole new, faster experience with your computer

Does this process render the old hard drive unusable or could you drop it back in the computer and function as normal?

I'm looking at two systems, both identical make and model and identical hardware. One runs a program perfectly the other just hangs when you start the program. The system works but the program just spins and spins.

The program has no registry ties, it's essentially self contained within it's file folder so 'install' is copy the folder to another computer and click the exe.

I want to copy the HDD that is working on to a new drive and see if it works in the box that's not working. I could drop the drive with the functioning program in the other computer but the fear is if it's a hardware issue (damned if I can figure out what that could be) it could damage the functioning drive.

If this doesn't affect the functioning drive this could be the best way too safely diagnose the problem.

[Rikrong]

I usually hate clogging up a thread with stuff not pertaining to the OP's question, but my question kind of ties in with what Kestryll asked and there seem to be experts in this thread.

I recently installed a 250gb MSATA SSD in place of the smaller SSD on my Acer laptop. OS was on the HDD, the original SSD was small and designed for caching/quick boot. I cloned the HDD to the new SSD and formatted the HDD after. However, no matter what I do, the computer will try to boot the HDD if it's installed. BIOS sees the SSD if the HDD is removed, but won't recognize the SSD if the HDD is installed. I'd like to keep the HDD on board for storage. Any suggestions? Thank you.

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

[67Cuda]

I usually hate clogging up a thread with stuff not pertaining to the OP's question, but my question kind of ties in with what Kestryll asked and there seem to be experts in this thread.

I recently installed a 250gb MSATA SSD in place of the smaller SSD on my Acer laptop. OS was on the HDD, the original SSD was small and designed for caching/quick boot. I cloned the HDD to the new SSD and formatted the HDD after. However, no matter what I do, the computer will try to boot the HDD if it's installed. BIOS sees the SSD if the HDD is removed, but won't recognize the SSD if the HDD is installed. I'd like to keep the HDD on board for storage. Any suggestions? Thank you.

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

Heard this a couple of weeks ago.

http://techguylabs.com/episodes/1465/why-doesnt-my-computer-boot-my-hard-drive

[lone shooter]

I usually hate clogging up a thread with stuff not pertaining to the OP's question, but my question kind of ties in with what Kestryll asked and there seem to be experts in this thread.

I recently installed a 250gb MSATA SSD in place of the smaller SSD on my Acer laptop. OS was on the HDD, the original SSD was small and designed for caching/quick boot. I cloned the HDD to the new SSD and formatted the HDD after. However, no matter what I do, the computer will try to boot the HDD if it's installed. BIOS sees the SSD if the HDD is removed, but won't recognize the SSD if the HDD is installed. I'd like to keep the HDD on board for storage. Any suggestions? Thank you.

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

I believe you have to go into the BIOS and change the setting in there. Something about ATA setting (from my preliminary research).

[lone shooter]

Does this process render the old hard drive unusable or could you drop it back in the computer and function as normal.

No room to do that in my laptop, so I'm going to format the old HDD and use it as external extra HDD.

I went with this BTW, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...b_2_5_ssd.html