#Clone a laptop hard drive to ssd how to
#Clone a laptop hard drive to ssd install
#Clone a laptop hard drive to ssd upgrade

Once the drive is hooked up to your computer you will need special software to make an exact copy of your hard drive to the SSD.

#Clone a laptop hard drive to ssd how to

A simple manual on how to do this should also be provided with the enclosure. Inserting the drive in the enclosure is very easy using the aforementioned screwdriver. These are available in just about every store that sells computer peripherals for about $20.

When this potential problem has been solved you need to insert your new SSD into an external USB hard drive enclosure. If your hard drive has a larger capacity than the SSD and the data on it exceeds what the SSD can store you will have to backup parts of the drive's contents before you clone the drive.

#Clone a laptop hard drive to ssd install

If you want to transfer an identical copy of your existing drive with the operating system and all your files to the new drive (without reinstalling Windows), the first thing you need to do is clone the hard drive (if you'd rather perform a clean install you can skip to the next step right away). That said, let's move on to the practical details. In some rare cases, swapping out the drive on your own voids the warranty, so check up on that also. Perform the following steps at your own risk. I'll throw in a disclaimer anyway just in case: Some would say that you also need an anti-static wrist strap, but during the 15 years or so that I've tinkered with computers I have never used one. To get your existing data over to the new drive you also need an external USB hard drive case. If you are looking at a large SSD, this part may ironically be more expensive than the laptop itself.

#Clone a laptop hard drive to ssd upgrade

The stuff you will need to upgrade the hard drive in your laptop to a speedy SSD while keeping your Windows 7 installation intact are (besides the obvious SSD and laptop) a small screwdriver and an app for cloning your hard drive's contents onto the new drive. On the other hand, an increasing amount of laptops ship with SSDs by default already (such as the MacBook Air) and as the prices continue to drop many more will follow. For the average geek the choice is easy, but the average user is probably not that eager to pay hundreds of dollars more to get that performance boost in their new laptop in exchange for less storage space

Compared in cost per gigabyte of storage space, the SSD is far more expensive. The only thing that's currently holding the SSD back from becoming widely adopted in all new computers is the hefty price tag. Another reason is that it has no moving parts that might break if you happen to drop your laptop. There are many good reasons to swap your hard drive for an SSD one is that a new solid state drive is about five times as fast as a hard drive, meaning that your operating system, applications and games will start much faster and your system will feel really snappy in general. Solid State Drives, or SSDs for short, are slowly but certainly taking over the hard disk drives role as the primary storage medium.