Upgrade Your Laptop with a Solid-State Drive (How-To)

Do you want your laptop to run faster? 

If your laptop is getting slow, it is time to upgrade to a solid-state drive (SSD). You can test your current hard drive speed with one of the free testing applications in the Windows Store. We like PC Benchmark which is a versatile tool for measuring speed of main computer components such as system storage (HDD or SSD), CPU, Memory and GPU.  There are also several similar apps available in the Mac App Store.

Why get a SSD?

A SSD is much faster than a standard  hard disk drive (HDD) because there are no moving parts in a SSD.  A HDD uses “a mechanical arm with a read/write head to move around and read information from the right location on a storage platter.”

The advantages of upgrading to a SSD are:

• Speed
• Safer: no moving parts
• Lighter
• Improved Battery Life

Items you will need:

• Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-75E250B/AM) (Find it on Amazon)

  • Make sure you have a SATA drive and not the smaller mSATA. It doesn’t cost any more but some thin laptops use the mSATA. Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB mSATA 2-Inch SSD (MZ-M5E250BW) (Find it on Amazon)

• SATA adaptor with cable or external drive case:
  • USB 3.0 to 2.5″ SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable w/ UASP – SATA to USB 3.0 Converter for SSD/HDD – Hard Drive Adapter Cable  (Find it on Amazon)
  • Sabrent 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool-free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized For SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP) (Find it on Amazon)
• TEKTON 2830 Everybit Tool Kit for Electronics, Phones and Precision Devices, 27-Piece (Find it on Amazon)

Software you will need:

• Drive Cloning Software:
  • For PC: Samsung Data Migration Software.
  • For Mac: Superduper or Carbon Copy Cloner. NOTE: If you have Bootcamp you will need Winclone.

The steps necessary to upgrade your hard drive to a SSD are simple as detailed in the below tutorials:

How to Upgrade Your Laptop with a SSD Drive.

How to upgrade a SSD on a Mac.