- #Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd how to#
- #Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd install#
- #Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd upgrade#
- #Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd portable#
- #Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd software#
At the command prompt window, type in diskpart then press Enter. In Windows 8, just type cmd directly into the Metro Start interface).Ģ. It's quite easy to find out if your computer's existing hard drive uses GPT or MBR.
#Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd upgrade#
If you upgrade the hard drive of a relatively new computer, one that comes with Windows 8 or 10 factory installed, it's highly likely that GPT is used. If not, the system won't boot at the end. (Note that Windows 8 and Windows 10 work with MBR, too.) If you want to use a pre-used SSD for your computer, you need to first make its drive format type the same as that of the existing hard drive, prior to the cloning process. There are two types of drive formats, including Master Boot Record (MBR), which is used in Windows 7 and earlier, and GUID Partition Table (GPT), adopted by Windows 8 and later. If you're using a brand new SSD, you can skip this step and move straight to the cloning process. This step is only necessary if you want to use a hand-me-down SSD (one that's been formatted before) to replace your existing hard drive on your computer. Generally, a standard small Phillips-head one will do. Pick one that works with the screws on your computer.
#Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd install#
Note that for a desktop, as an option, you can skip this adapter and install the SSD as a secondary internal drive for the cloning process, which works much faster than connecting via USB.Īnd finally, you'll need a small screwdriver.
#Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd portable#
If you have a Seagate GoFlex external hard drive (a portable or desktop version), you can use the adapter part of the drive for the job. These adapters can be found online for around $15 or so. The third thing you need is a USB-to-SATA adapter. It also supports all types of hard drive formats.
#Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd software#
This software allows you to clone the existing drive to a new one without even restarting the computer. There are many of them on the market and most of them work well (some SSDs come with this software installed) but my favorite for the job is the free version of Macrium Reflect. The second thing you need is cloning software. It never hurts to get a large SSD of the same or even larger capacity as the existing hard drive, though, if you can afford it. That means, for example, if your computer's main hard drive's capacity is 1TB but you have just used up about 200GB, then you just need an SSD that's 240GB. One important thing to keep in mind: make sure you get an SSD with a higher capacity than the total amount of data you currently have on the hard drive you're replacing. To quickly find out the best options, check out my current list of best SSDs. That said, you should get a drive that offers the most capacity for the least money. While not all SSDs are created equal, all SSDs are so much faster than any regular hard drive that the differences between the SSDs themselves are insignificant to someone moving up from a hard drive. There are a few things you need for this job.įirst, you'll obviously need an SSD. You won't need to be actively involved most of this time, however.
It's a similar process for both desktop and laptops computers though it's much easier to work with a desktop, thanks to its larger chassis.ĭepending on how much data you have on the computer's main hard drive, this project will take from 20 minutes to a couple of hours.
General direction: The replacement process basically involves cloning the entire existing hard drive's content to an SSD, then physically taking the hard drive out of the computer and putting the SSD in its place. With a new Samsung SSD, this old Dell Laptop will soon be much faster than it has ever been. The steps on this post are done with Windows 10, which you should upgrade to soon, since the free upgrade offer ends July 29. Previous versions of Windows don't support SSDs very well. The computer needs to be running Windows 7, 8 or 10.
#Cloning hard drive windows 10 to ssd how to#
In this post, I'll walk you through how to replace a Windows computer's internal hard drive with an SSD while keeping the software, data and settings exactly the same. You can find out more about the differences between traditional hard drives and SSDs here.) (A standard SSD looks like a traditional 2.5-inch laptop hard drive, but it's much faster. The good news is that swapping out the drives is quite easy to do and not too expensive either, thanks to the fact that SSDs are now much more affordable than they were a few years ago. Do you know that replacing that hard drive with a solid-state drive (SSD) will make the machine run much faster? It's true, a 5-year-old computer with an SSD boots much faster than even a brand new rig running on a regular hard drive. This is also the case of most older computers. If your new Windows 10 computer takes a long time to boot up, that's likely because it runs on a regular hard drive. Editors' note: This post was originally published on March 13, 2012, and is periodically updated.
0 kommentar(er)
