exchanging pc hard drive for ssd drive

[glennjamin]

Home pc hard drive is starting to make a grinding sound. How easy is it to exchange drive for ssd. Is it easy enough to transfer files and applications over to ssd drive ?

[Cupramax]

Yes, as long as you have a spare sata socket and cable to connect the new drive at the same time as your old one, most of them come with some sort of drive imaging utility to copy the disk. Dead easy to do. Pretty much plug it in, boot up, run the disk copy utility and copy old disk to new. Let it run, on complete turn off, unplug old disk,plug new drive into the old socket.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

And you’ll probably find it’s the best computer upgrade you’ve ever done. Don’t be surprised if your computer boots in a tenth of the time.

[joshleb]

I'm installing a new SSD tonight, and will then do a clean install of windows onto it.

Get the computer running quickly again!

Be careful if just transferring everything that you have enough space on the new SSD.

[Mr Pointy]

It's usually quite straightforward. You will need an SSD (at least the same size as your used disk space), a USB to SATA converter, a copy of Macrium Reflect free & a bootable USB storage stick - I usually use one around 32GB but smaller may be enough.
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=usb+to+sata&ref=n...

Load Reflect onto PC
Set PC boot order to put USB before HDD
Make USB stick bootable
Create Rescue Disk - check it boots & then remove
Connect SSD to PC using USB to SATA adapter
Clone all HDD partitions on to SSD
Remove HDD & replace with SSD
Power up & PC should boot
If it doesn't insert Rescue stick & reboot
Use Macrium to correct boot partion issue
Remove Rescue stick & PC should now boot

[Condi]

2 ways suggested - either copy everything across, or save the files you want to a backup location and do a clean install of Windows.

As a preference the second will give you much better performance, removing years of crap you no longer need, but is obviously more complicated and does run the risk of you needing something in 12 months time which was never copied over.

SSD is the best upgrade you will do for your computer, and prices now are so cheap that there is no reason anyone would use an old school HDD as a main hard drive. At the very least install WIndows on the SSD even if your games and photos are installed elsewhere.

Edited by Condi on Tuesday 13th October 16:04

[dazwalsh]

Just set your current HD to a slave and install Windows into the new SSD.

I did this when I upgraded mine to ssd, it means I can if required, change the boot order and boot to the old hard drive if I need to.

[joshleb]

joshleb said:

I'm installing a new SSD tonight, and will then do a clean install of windows onto it.

Get the computer running quickly again!

Be careful if just transferring everything that you have enough space on the new SSD.

Just want to say I did this last night, not quite as straight forward as I'd been led to believe but certainly manageable.

I had errors with the boot drive and the SSD not accepting windows initially, sorted now though.

I've just connected up my HDD as well and am transferring files between that to me new SSD and an external HDD. I'll then format my old HDD and move over anything I want stored on there back to it, pictures, videos, games etc.

[AJB88]

Easy last time I did it, connect USB caddy cable to new SSD, copy old HDD to SSD. take HDD out, fit SSD.

Boot... enjoy the speed upgrade.