Upgrade storage on a Dell Inspiron 3502 laptop

[Nath911t]

I'm probably over thinking this.

I've seen the video on the Dell website to increase storage and it looks straight forward enough. Current one is 128GB and I keep getting the low storage message with hardly much saved on it in the way of files, music, pictures, etc and I'm now thinking of changing it to 1TB. Specs in the picture. Question is what upgraded one do I get as there seems loads of them? Is it a simple case of copy what I do have on my current laptop (I've a separate storage device), change over then copy it back to the newly installed one? TIA

[the-norseman]

You would be best getting a bigger SSD of exactly the same type you have, cloning it and then installing that SSD as the boot device and removing the 128GB.

I personally would also look into at the same time, if the machine is capable of supporting more than 4GB RAM as 4GB in todays standard is very low.

[rodericb]

Whoa that's light-on for a couple of years old laptop. I see that they come with either a 2.5" hard disk drive or a M.2 drive. If the M.2 slot is spare you might be able to whack a 1TB drive into it. Then it'll be a D drive or whatever is spare.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

That is a very low spec laptop, personally I would just buy a new one with a non celeron processor.

4gb of ram must be painful for windows, 8gb is the minimum really these days and I would recommend 16gb.

Also are you sure that the hard drive and ram are not actually soldered to the board and hence cannot be upgraded?

[Mr Pointy]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

That is a very low spec laptop, personally I would just buy a new one with a non celeron processor.

4gb of ram must be painful for windows, 8gb is the minimum really these days and I would recommend 16gb.

Also are you sure that the hard drive and ram are not actually soldered to the board and hence cannot be upgraded?

Indeed. I would question the wisdom of spending any more on such a low end laptop.

[biggiles]

Agreed. Also note that these days it's not a simple process of switching drives, there is loads of tedious security built-in to BIOS & Windows etc. these days. Be prepared for a bit of faff. If you're not confident taking the back off your laptop generally, you might want to engage some local help in doing the upgrade for you.

[MustangGT]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

That is a very low spec laptop, personally I would just buy a new one with a non celeron processor.

4gb of ram must be painful for windows, 8gb is the minimum really these days and I would recommend 16gb.

Also are you sure that the hard drive and ram are not actually soldered to the board and hence cannot be upgraded?

And another from me.

[Panamax]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

That is a very low spec laptop, personally I would just buy a new one

+1

My attempts at upgrades have never been worthwhile. Replacing the weakest link in the chain just exposes the next weakest link in the chain. I've concluded the makers design these things as "balanced" systems where the various bits are happy working with each other. Change one bit and the balance gets upset. No, I'm not a tech guru and am currently staring at replacement of an ACER i5 PC that's only 5 years old for this very reason. The prospect of trying to get the old one changed from Windows 10 to Windows 11 fills me with dread so I'm just going to replace the whole thing.

[xeny]

Panamax said:

The prospect of trying to get the old one changed from Windows 10 to Windows 11 fills me with dread so I'm just going to replace the whole thing.

Just run the update. Functionally the 10->11 upgrade process is very similar to the periodic Windows 10 Feature Updates. We've done literally thousands of them at this point.

I suppose in the unlikely event it fails then buy a new one, otherwise that money could be put in a globally diversified equity fund.