Windows 10: Installing a Solid State Drive to my laptop.

So since I am 12 I am probably going to get a lot for Christmas. So I decided I will make my notebook laptop into a gaming PC. Before you think; Laptop.. Gaming PC? It is a beast of a laptop and it has beaten many desktops at video games, applications ect. One of the main problems I have with this laptop is that it is amazing but when it gets to a certain point it just stops performing as well as it should, I checked task manager and the Ram was pretty low, the CPU was pretty low, the Ethernet connection was fine but the Hard Disk Performance is sky high (Even when I am doing totally nothing. Bearing in mind the read speed was 6.5mb/s and the Write speed was going under 135Kb/s (135Kb Max). So I decided I needed to get an SSD but I have no idea how to install one or transfer my laptop data to an SSD.

Thanks,

:)

 

Windows 10 key

I had purchased a laptop second hand from a friend, and in the process of setting it up for myself I did not switch from the hard drive that the laptop came with to the solid state drive I have for it and installed and activated Windows 10 with a new key.
After I switch to the solid state drive, will I have any issues if I use the same key?

 

Unable to boot from a hard drive/ solid state drive

Hi there, I recently installed a new ssd into my desktop which had only previously had a normal hard drive. Obviously i would like to boot to my ssd when the computer starts because it is faster then the hard drive. However, when I look in my bios, the
number one boot priority is UEFI : Windows Boot Manager. I don't see any way to redirect this from the windows boot manager to a specific hard drive. Does anyone know of any way I can do this?

 

Are you asking how to do that?

If you wish to clone your hard disk onto an SSD, you'll need some way of attaching the SSD to your laptop. If the laptop has a second HD mounting location, you could use that. Otherwise, you'd probably want a USB to SATA cable. (The SSD can be powered off the USB cable.) There are SSD kits that include the cable, but you can buy it separately. In addition, you'd need drive cloning software, which is generally included with an SSD purchase.

It's not a difficult process, but I think that when I was 12, I would have wanted help from an experienced person, like a computer savvy 15 year old.

 

Assuming you only want to replace the HDD with an SSD (not many laptops have room for a second disk, but a "beast" may, IDK *Wink):

As far as physical installation, it would help if you tell us the model number of your HP laptop - you'll need to make sure what kind of connection you have for the SSD and what thickness (height) of SSD will fit in there and whether it needs a shim (inserted pad of some kind) to give it a firm seating that stays in place.

If you look into a free software like Macrium Reflect Free (some find it more reliable than manufacturer supplied cloning software), you can go with either cloning from the HDD to the SSD or else do an image of the HDD (onto an external disk) and then restore to the SSD - either has its advantages for the particular user. In any event, you'll want to run "winsat formal" from an elevated command prompt after the SSD is in place just to ensure Windows takes a fresh look at your disk and treats it like an SSD rather than an HDD (the source of all the data on the SSD.

P.S. - Welcome to TenForums, Theo!

 

Another vote to use Macrium. Swapping hard-drives in a laptop is easy. As mentioned above, the biggest difficulty is connecting the new SSD to the laptop while the original HDD is still running. Figure out which data and power cables/connectors/adapters you need.
After you've got that done, get the free Macrium utility and clone your existing drive onto the new one. (Depending on sizes, you'll either need to shrink the original first, or expand the second after you've installed it.)

Good luck!

 

Windows Backup and Restore (Windows 7) (in the Control Panel) allows you to make an image of your hard drive to a network or USB device (in addition to an installed device). It's an easy option withough having to install another program.