Swapping Laptop Hdd For Ssd?

[PlayStation 10]

windows 10 is absolutely crap on my laptop and is mega slow no matter what i try. 

 

now i have seen many times that rubbish hard drives are to blame for slow machines. so i was thinking of buying a SSD to help with speed.

 

the problem i have is, i don't have any recovery discs with this laptop, just a factory image partition on the drive. so if i did swap for a SSD. how would i get my OS back on.

 

i know W10 runs off digital licence so i could just download and boot and install from USB but i want it with all the original software and stuff that was provided with the HP factory image and also get that recovery partition on the SSD.

 

what are my options?

Edited October 12, 2019 by PlayStation

[Ghozer 112]

There is usually a way to make a recovery CD or USB from within windows, many manufacturers include their own software to do this, which includes all the 'bundled' bloatware that they usually include...

This is what I could find on the HP site... Although it's quite vague as to whether or not it will include the bloatware.

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c04641788

[PlayStation 10]

i managed to stumbled across the recovery drive too. yes no idea if it will include bloatware, but i have had a look through installed things and to be honest there isn't anything at risk of losing forever as i can download them from the HP website such as HP Support Assistant for downloading the latest BIOS and Drivers for my laptop.

 

the thing is i do not have a 16GB USB stick. but i do have a 16GB Micro SD card and a SD/Micro SD to USB adapter. should still work as if it is a full on USB flash drive shouldn't it?

 

 

[Ghozer 112]

Well, if you can download things you need, just make sure to backup any photo's and documents etc you wish to keep (and potentially any browser bookmarks etc) - then you can Create a bootable USB from any other machine using the Windows 10 Media Creation tool, and just install a fresh Windows 10 when you install an SSD

You may be able to use the MicroSD > USB adapter, it should (theoretically) work - it might not be as fast as a standard USB Flash Drive though, but it should still work... (although if there are any issues, that is the first thing I would try to eliminate)

[PlayStation 10]

ye creating the media as we speak. to be honest if it doesn't work i will just download windows 10 from their site.

 

many thanks for the help 👍

[Jomie 30]

PlayStation - how old is your laptop and what are the specifications? Why is it slow? Before going to the expense and work of swapping the hard drive it might be worth doing a bit of housekeeping to see if it improves the speed.  

 

The recovery drive will have all the bloatware which can take a while to remove so a fresh install of W10 would maybe give best performance but you need to get the license number from your current hard drive first. 

 

Sometimes it can be better to cut your losses and look for a new laptop. Companies such as Laptops Direct are worth checking out for bargains. 

[PlayStation 10]

4 minutes ago, Jomie said:

PlayStation - how old is your laptop and what are the specifications? Why is it slow? Before going to the expense and work of swapping the hard drive it might be worth doing a bit of housekeeping to see if it improves the speed.  

 

The recovery drive will have all the bloatware which can take a while to remove so a fresh install of W10 would maybe give best performance but you need to get the license number from your current hard drive first. 

 

Sometimes it can be better to cut your losses and look for a new laptop. Companies such as Laptops Direct are worth checking out for bargains. 

the laptop is around 1.5yr old. it's a HP with 7th Gen intel cor i5. 8GB ram and a 1TB hard drive.

 

i have tried alsorts from using software like Ccleaner to cleanup registry and unwanted junk files, right upto using windows own disk cleaner. there is nothing stored on the hard drive such as pictures etc. 

 

the laptop has never really been speedy right from new. i tried a few W10 laptops and all was complete dog poo for performance. this was the quickest but over the past year has become slow and countless factory resets haven't helped.

 

the boot up times are shocking. my old 11yr old Compaq desktop with 2.80GHz dual-core cpu, 2GB ram and 500GB hdd is faster than this.

 

after much advice from other people and a lot of searching on the net, it seems a lot of laptops these days are fitted with rubbish hard drives which over time make the machine terribly slow.

[Jomie 30]

An SSD should make a big difference. Hope the swap goes well. 

[AlAN J 10]

There’s a way to clone your hard drive to the new SSD drive. Once fitted apparently you can log in using the same password. My son did it recently. 

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by AlAN J

[AlAN J 10]

I think this is the one I should have shared. 

 

[apelike 10]

Hi PlayStaion.

 

HP laptops are notoriously slow with the 1TB HD that is supplied. I have just upgraded one from its 1TB drive to a 500Gb Crucial SSD, it now boots in around 12 seconds and is much more responsive. I used a USB caddy so I could use the 1TB drive housed in it as a backup drive.

 

Modern HP laptops don't normally come with easy access to the HD and may need the whole bottom panel taking off to access the drive so be wary of that. Not too hard to do so try and get the service manual from HP for your model.

[alchresearch 214]

I've just done a disk upgrade from SATA to SSD using CLONEZILLA on a USB stick.

 

It duplicates from one disk to another seamlessly, so no need to go to the trouble of re-installing the OS, drivers and all your progs.