In most cases on any laptop that has a conventional hard drive), a 2.5 inch sata hard drive should work. This is a safe bet unless your next PC is a really cheap emmc based one (which has soldered on memory) or you have a ultrabook (which probably has no sata bay). If it has a hard drive, a sata drive will work.
In the BIOS, check that the new drive is detected – if not, you'll need to refit it. Go to the boot section of the BIOS and change the boot order so that your laptop boots from CD and then the hard drive. Save the settings, insert the Windows install CD or System Recovery disc and reboot your laptop.
Steps:
- Remove the hard drive from the laptop.
- Find the hard drive type from its label.
- Check for PC motherboard specifications.
- Purchase the connector or adapter which is needed.
- Plug the hard drive correctly with the adapter and motherboard of PC.
- Check for the connected hard drive in BIOS.
A 500GB 2.5-inch internal hard drive costs about $60, but a 480GB solid-state drive (SSD) upgrade kit may sell for $400 or more. A laptop Blu-ray drive can fall anywhere between $40 and $300 depending upon the model and whether you want disc-writing capability.
Most laptops generally have 1x HDD bay - although newer laptops may also have an M. 2 slot for an SSD. If you laptop has an optical drive, you can usually remove than and replace with a caddy for an HDD.
If you are looking to buy a hard drive, there are some things to consider first:
- Hard drive Storage Capacity.
- Rotational speed.
- Internal versus External/Portability.
- IDE versus SATA Hard drive.
- SSHD/SSD versus HDD storage.
- Bonus: Manufacturers.
Any computer motherboard and hard drive that share a supported connection standard will work with each other. Motherboards that have Peripheral Component Interconnect and PCI Express expansion slots can use adapter cards to work with unsupported hard drives.
When replacing a motherboard you can almost certainly use your hard disks, the question is how much additional work and configuration you might need.
Comparing SSDs and HDDsHDDs are a legacy storage technology that use spinning disks to read/write data. SSDs are faster and more power efficient than HDDs. HDDs are priced lower, but SSD prices are dropping.
If you just need a storage space to keep a backup of your documents, media and files, then 2 TB disk is the best investment. The Price per GB of the 2 TB disk is way less than the 1 TB, and saves money in the longer run. Disks also have rotational speeds mentioned as part of their specifications.
Best external hard drives at a glance
- Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC.
- Western Digital My Passport Ultra 4TB.
- Samsung T5 SSD.
- Adata SD700.
- WD My Book Duo 4TB.
- Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt.
- Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5TB.
- Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro.
The best external hard drives and SSDs
- Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC.
- Samsung Portable SSD T5.
- Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt.
- G-Technology G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3.
- LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB.
- Adata SD700 External SSD.
- WD My Book Duo.
- LaCie Rugged USB-C. This rugged design is great for storage on the move.
You don't need both but having a SSD for your operating system and a HDD for your storage drive might be the best bang for your buck. Otherwise, you only need one; a HDD is cheaper, larger, slower, and more prone to data loss. A SSD are normally smaller in storage for the same price but faster and shock resistant.
So before heading to the store to buy one, here are things you should consider first (e.g. various data storage example).
- Storage Capacity. Capacity refers to the amount of data that a data storage device can handle.
- Transfer Speed and Performance.
- Cache Space.
- Access Times.
- Data Safety.
No, in most cases it won't work. Windows has all the device drivers and chipset drivers installed for the current system. When moving it to a different system, the OS will usually fail to boot. In some cases it can be fixed with a repair install.
Standard 2.5" drives are 9.5mm, but some of the thinner laptops may use a 7mm one, which would mean that a drive with 9.5mm height won't fit in that slot. Caching basically makes the drive faster by storing data which you might use next.
As long as they're both the same size and connect via the same interface (SATA/IDE/etc) it could work. The operating system and software are located ON those hard drives, so if you did switch them the operating system and software (not to mention personal files) would switch as well.
Simply look at the connector on the SSD drive and then look for a matching place to connect it on the computer (you can check the specs for the computer and drive to see if the same connector is mentioned in both). Internal SSD drives can connect via SATA, PCIe, M. 2, U. 2, mSATA, and SATA Express.
Find out how much storage your PC has
- Select the Start button, and then select Settings .
- Select System > Storage.
Open your "My Computer" icon. (In Windows Vista, click on the Start button in the lower left, then click on the Computer button.) The "C" drive is the drive where most computer users store all of their files. Right-click on the "C" drive, and click on "Properties".
View disk space use in Windows 10
- Open Settings (Start - Settings)
- Select System.
- Select Storage.
- Select the drive you wish to see detail for.
- The storage usage, broken down by data type, will be displayed.
If the Windows key is not available on your keyboard, using your mouse, go to the Windows icon located on the bottom-left corner of your screen, right-click, and choose System. Look up the processor's name and number in the Processor information.
How can I find out which graphics card I have in my PC?
- Click Start.
- On the Start menu, click Run.
- In the Open box, type "dxdiag" (without the quotation marks), and then click OK.
- The DirectX Diagnostic Tool opens. Click the Display tab.
- On the Display tab, information about your graphics card is shown in the Device section.
Check generation of the processor of my laptop:
- Right-click on “This PC” or “My computer icon” on your desktop.
- Click properties from the menu.
- Look for “processor” under the system section.
