Is it possible to change hard disk in laptop

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Smart TVs Ads. Team Comes to Workplace by Meta. Block People Spotify. Verizon Selling PS5. Windows 11 SE Explained. Find Downloaded Files on an iPhone. Always check the source and target disk to avoid problems! Don't forget that the capacity of the new disk must be bigger than the total disk size of the source disk. If there are problems afterwards, you can fall back on this.

Testing the cloned disk If you have a PC, you can now shut down the computer and disconnect the cables from the hard drive that needs to be replaced, while leaving the new drive connected. When you turn on your PC, it should start up without any problems. If not, use the old hard disk or the recovery disk. Replace the hard disk of your laptop To replace the hard disk of a laptop, you proceed slightly different:.

Connect a second drive A laptop has only room for one hard disk. Cloning the disk In this second step you have to transfer the data from the old hard drive to the new one, just like you did with a PC. For this you can use a docking station like the EW with Clone function.

Otherwise search online for alternative solutions. In some cases it is included or you can search for special software on Google. Some are free, for some you have to pay. Replacing the old hard disk drive on your laptop Once the new drive is ready to use, you can swap it with the old one.

Turn your laptop off and then disconnect both the power cable and any other connected cables -- including the SSD. Then unscrew the back panel and remove it to get access to your hard drive. Look for any screws securing your drive to the laptop. You'll need to unscrew those before you can remove the drive. In its place, install the SSD and put the back panel on.

Install the SSD by doing the reverse of how you removed the HDD: Slide the drive in at an angle and push it firmly into place so it's fully connected to the interface.

Then secure it with the screw you removed in the last step and, finally, screw the back panel covering the drive back on. The moment of truth: Turn your laptop on. If your laptop boots as normal and you see all of your programs and settings just the way they were before except much faster , all went well.

For one final test to see everything went as planned, let's make sure Windows recognizes your drive as an SSD. Mission complete! By the way, SSDs should not be defragmented. Windows 10 knows this. By default, your drive will be automatically optimized. You can now put your old drive in the enclosure and wipe it in Disk Management, perhaps moving your media files to this drive.

Just make sure your automated backup system you have one, right? Another way you can tell the migration worked? Backing up the data you want to keep is the most important step in this process!

The hard drive isn't the valuable thing—it's the priceless files you've created and collected over the years. Backing up could mean something as simple as copying files you want over to a large flash drive or other storage you're not using. Better yet, if you're not backing up regularly already, use this as an opportunity to start with a cloud backup service , so you never even run the chance of losing a file again. Uninstalling the existing hard drive is easy. Make sure your computer is turned off and then disconnect the hard drive and physically remove it.

The details here depend on the type of computer you have, but in general, this means removing data and power cables or sliding the hard drive out from the bay that it's installed into. Installing the new hard drive is as simple as reversing the steps you took to uninstall the one you're replacing!

Secure the drive where the old one was before and then reconnect the same power and data cables. Once your computer is back on, it's time to format the hard drive , so it's ready to store files. Once that's done, copy the data you backed up to the new drive, and you're set! Below are links to illustrated guides that will walk you through the hard drive replacement process. The specific steps necessary to replace a hard drive differ depending on the type of hard drive you're replacing:.

A SATA hard drive is the newer style hard drive with the thin 7-pin cables. Are you replacing your primary hard drive that the operating system is installed on? If so, we highly recommend that you start fresh on your new hard drive with a clean installation of Windows , versus copying the entire contents of the old drive to the new one.

A fresh install of Windows will avoid any problems of data corruption or other software related issues that might have been present on your original hard drive.