if your laptop seems to be getting
slower and more sluggish swapping out
the hard drive for an ssd is one of the
best ways to dramatically improve your
laptop's speed and performance plus it
will also help to increase its battery
life and keep it slightly cooler on your
lap too you've got a choice as to
whether you want to put the new hard
drive in blank and install windows or
whatever operating system you'll be
using from scratch or to clone the
contents of the old hard drive onto the
new one i'll be showing you both options
in this video and keep watching to the
end as i'll be showing you what you can
do to put your laptop's old hard drive
to good use too next a hard drive
docking station like this is a really
useful thing to own this one accepts
both two and a half inch and three and a
half inch sata hard drives and ssds and
comes in both usb a or usb c varieties
it's great for both grabbing stuff off
your old hard drive if you connect it to
your computer with a usb cable and you
can also use it as a standalone device
to create an exact mirror of your hard
drive onto the ssd if you prefer that
method rather than installing the ssd
blank and installing windows onto it
if you want a fresh clean windows
installation though before you proceed
you'll need to make a bootable usb
installation drive for windows if you
don't need to do this you can skip ahead
to the next step using this video's
chapters you'll need a usb flash drive
that's at least eight gigabytes in size
and i've put a link in the video
description which takes you to the
microsoft website where you can select
the version of windows windows 10 in
this case then under create windows 10
installation media you can click
download tool now
run the tool and when it asks you what
you want to do choose create
installation media if you're running
this on the same laptop you'll be
installing windows on later leave tick
to the box that says use the recommended
options for this pc
plug in your usb flash drive and then
select it from the drive list be careful
to select the right one as everything on
it will get wiped the tool will then
download the most up-to-date windows
setup files and set them up on the usb
flash drive ready for use later once
you've installed your new ssd it takes a
little while and you can still use your
computer for other things whilst it
completes
the next step now is to remove your
current hard drive some laptops have
special flaps to let you easily access
ram and hard drives but sadly newer ones
tend not to so you have to take the
whole bottom off this doesn't mean it's
impossible but it does make it slightly
more complicated and potentially
daunting to open up the whole machine
but don't worry these steps will guide
you through and you'll see how easy it
can be
as a supporter of right to repair i
believe we should go back to having easy
access flaps that lift up so you can
quickly get to the good stuff underneath
comment below and hit the thumbs up if
you agree
so to completely remove this laptop's
outer garments flip the laptop over and
if it has a removable battery remove it
the exact procedure from here on in
varies from laptop to laptop so yours
might be quite different from this but
the general concepts are all the same
remove all the screws and place them to
one side being careful not to let any
roll away and get lost
be sure to pay attention to where each
screw came from if on your laptop for
some of different lengths fortunately on
this one they all seem to be the same
length this laptop is fairly easy to
disassemble but if it's not immediately
obvious how to do that on yours
ifixit.com is great for disassembly
guides just search for your model of
laptop they also do some great quality
toolkits for repairing gadgets so if you
need a set of precision screwdrivers
picks spudgers and other opening tools
then i'll leave a link in the video
description to this pro tek toolkit
you may well find screws hidden
underneath the soft little feet in the
corner so you'll have to peel them away
to reveal the extra screws underneath
with all the screws removed use a
plastic pick to gently pry apart the
laptop at the edges take your time and
gently run along to unclip the plastic
clips underneath being careful not to
snap them
once it's loose take off the lid to
reveal the inner workings of the laptop
this is the hard drive here
sata hard drives have two connections
running to them for power and data but
it's quite common like on this laptop
here for a separate little circuit board
sometimes called a daughter board to
connect to them both and then use one
combined connection back to the
computer's main motherboard so in this
case it's just this flap here we need to
lever up carefully to disconnect the
hard drive then you can remove all the
screws and carefully lift away the hard
drive slide the doorboard off and remove
the mounting hardware from the drive if
you want to clone your hard drive's
contents onto the ssd then it's at this
stage that you can use that hard drive
docking station to do that with one
simple button press but if you want to
install a completely fresh windows
installation then you don't need to do
that and can move on to the next stage
attach the ssd to the laptop's mounting
hardware being careful to attach it all
the same way round as the hard drive sat
and then screw it in place and connect
any ribbon cables then just reverse all
the steps to put the laptop back
together ready for switch on
if you cloned your hard drive contents
to the ssd then you should be finished
now although if the ssd is larger than
the hard drive was then you might have a
partition which is only as large as your
hard drive was in which case some free
space might be left unused and
unavailable go into disk management to
remedy that
if you're going down the fresh install
road then grab the usb flash drive you
made earlier on and boot up from that
to do that depending on your laptop and
how old it is you may need to go into
the bios or uefi to disable secure boot
and then go to legacy and get it to boot
off usb first don't forget to either
change this back or restore defaults
after you've installed windows
your computer will now boot from the usb
drive so you can install a fresh copy of
windows and once that's done you can
then use a hard drive docking station to
copy all the data off your old hard
drive and back onto your laptop and its
new ssd and once you've done that don't
throw away that old hard drive buy a
cheap portable usb caddy like this one
to turn it into a handy portable
external hard drive that you can use for
things like backups and carrying large
files and documents around with you if
you found this video helpful please
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you can also follow me on twitter i'm at
paulfp thanks for watching and i hope
i'll see you again soon