Swapping HDD for SSD

I had to leave my work-issued surface at work for a while, which meant doing homework on my 7+ year old toshiba laptop. Woof. Imagine trying to edit a pair of 20 page papers and narrate a recorded slide deck on something that struggles to run firefox at turtle speed. Things got done eventually, but it was touch and go for a while and frustrating enough that I started wondering if it was time to upgrade.

Unfortunately replacing a PC is not in the budget right now, which is why it was so nice to have a surface pro for homework. But I still wanted to do something, and a tiny budget meant the only real solution might be to switch out the old mechanical hard drive for an SSD. Having tried and failed to switch PC or smart device components in the past this was kind of daunting but in the end it wasn't too bad.

I ended up with a 500gb samsung SSD with a USB connector for about $90. The scary thing is that's about half of what I paid for the toshiba in the first place. I'm serious, this was a budget-minded project all the way around. But 90 bucks in and I'm pot-committed at that point, so the fact that cloning the old drive took 24 hours instead of the 4-5 I was expecting didn't feel like a good sign.

Paid a little more to go with samsung b/c their software got good reviews. 

Essentially 24 hours later...

But it finished, and I pulled the battery out of the laptop. Then the hard drive, which was surprisingly easy. Popped the SSD in and crossed my fingers...

Pulling the old drive

And we have boot up! Amazingly after the cloning was done the rest of the job was less than 5 minutes. The SSD fit right into the HDD bracket and was closed back up really quick. And I'll admit, it is functioning much better now. I'll hold on to the old drive for a while, but I think with some reformatting our xbox might just have picked up an external storage drive.

The only downside is I didn't get a USB-SATA connector with a power source, and I realized after the fact I have an old 3.5 inch SATA drive with vacation pictures on it I need to get running at some point. There are actually a couple of old PC's around I should probably pull the hard drives on. Oh well. Another $20 on this project for an enclosure won't break the bank.