How to Transfer Data When Replacing Laptop Hard Drive With Solid State Drive?
Replacing an ancient mechanical drive with an ultra-fast solid state drive is one of the best upgrades you can make to your desktop or laptop. While that won’t turn your 8-year-old HP into a new Mac M1, you will definitely feel and appreciate the difference (especially if you pair it with extra RAM, but let’s not get too wild).
However, Lifehacker reader Len faces a dilemma. He wants to know how to transfer all of his data from his laptop’s old and failed mechanical drive to a new solid state drive. He’s writing:
“I bought a Samsung SSD 500GB SATA 6Gb / s to upgrade my old Toshiba laptop. What’s the best way to do this and transfer data from the old drive? “
Upgrading your storage is a great time to start fresh
You might not like my answer Len, but I think it’s the best one: unplugging your hard drive is a great excuse to install a new, garbage-free version of your operating system, which I believe is Windows 10, but if not, we talked about it too .
Of course, you can easily clone your entire mechanical drive to a new SSD, but it will take a little more hardware and you will probably end up using it once and forget about it.
Replacing your laptop hard drive usually means removing the primary hard drive and installing a new one (as I can’t remember many laptops had room for a second drive). This is a little different from your typical desktop PC, where you can install a new SSD, plug it into your motherboard, and run both drives at the same time. In this case, you clone your original drive to the new one, unplug and remove the old one, and plug the new one using the original SATA connection. Typically, your system should boot normally with the new disk and you won’t miss a second.
With a laptop, it gets a little tricky. To connect to an SSD, you will need a cheap external case or a USB to SATA adapter that allows you to connect the SSD to your laptop’s USB port. Then you run the disk clone as before. This may take some time depending on the amount of data transferred and the USB speed you are using.
Instead, I suggest you audit the data on your laptop this time. What do you really need? What can you get rid of or re-download later if and when you need it? If you keep a bunch of iTunes movies on your system for convenience, or have a ton of music files that you rarely listen to, you probably don’t need them to take up space on your laptop.
Whenever possible, transfer your data to the cloud so that you can back it up elsewhere and only access it when needed. Applications and programs? Make a list , save or write down in your mind any specific settings that interest you, and do not worry about them; you can always reinstall them later.
I try to use my laptop as a simple workstation. When I’m working on something, I try to edit it in the cloud whenever possible. If it needs to live on my desktop, it goes off to another location when I’m done with it – usually back to the cloud, but also to the trash can if needed.
I have a desktop computer that I feel the same way about. Photos and documents are uploaded to the cloud; the PC itself is usually an intermediary between the raw material and the finished product. (I’ve been playing too much Dyson Sphere lately.) I stream my media whenever possible, instead of storing it for years on my hard drive, or I transfer it to a NAS drawer where he can copy it back to his desktop, or wherever I want to access it.
This makes backups a breeze. I don’t clone my hard drive anymore. I just copy my entire Windows custom folder to another hard drive (to keep data like my wallpaper and my overflowing Downloads folder). If I faced any serious problem with Windows, or even a complete failure of the hard drive, I would just reinstall Windows 10 from scratch. It takes less than an hour to set it up, including reinstalling the apps I use every day and my absurdly large Steam library.
So here’s my suggestion: copy important data to the cloud, swap disks and reinstall Windows on a new one. You will have a simple operating system that you can populate with the data you really need.
However, if you have too much data that you simply cannot part with, you need to follow the path I mentioned earlier. A case spring for drives – perhaps even a docking station – that supports both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives. Plug in the SSD, clone your laptop drive to the SSD, and then swap the drives. Now, hold onto your old mechanical hard drive . Not only does it have a current backup of all your files, but you can also insert it into your case or dock and use it as a secondary source of backups in the future.
Regarding the process of replacing your laptop hard drive with an SSD, you did not mention your exact model, so I cannot provide specific guidance. Generally speaking, you will have to remove the panel or the entire back of the laptop in order to access the hard drive. Here’s a good example of what’s going on:
I recommend getting a precision screwdriver set for this kind of thing, but you may not need it if your regular screwdriver is good enough. Make sure you ground yourself before touching the insides of your laptop (so you don’t fry anything with static electricity), and do your best not to drop or lose any of the tiny screws you will be dealing with. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be a very difficult upgrade.