Problem Description
-
spinning drives can be really slow, causing slow load
times/compile times. -
SSDs aren’t as susceptible to bumps/rotation, due to a lack of
precisely moving read/write heads and rapidly spinning discs.
Tools Used
- hand tools:
- screwdrivers
- spudgers
- hands/fingers (very useful!)
- software:
- AOMEI backupper
- disk manager (It’s built into windows)
- diskpart (WARNING: this is a command line utility, take great
care if you want to keep your data! use it only if you NEED
to!(failed clone, etc))
- hardware:
- just a standard drive caddy (enclosure/device to connect a drive
to a computer via usb)
- just a standard drive caddy (enclosure/device to connect a drive
Process
- put the ssd in the caddy
- plug the caddy into the machine
- use AOMEI to “clone” the main machine drive to the ssd, making
sure to enable “align for ssd”- Note: copy must be done on machine! If you run Aomei on a different machine and use it to copy from the original drive, you will end up with a SSD copy that does not boot. It seems that AOMEI grabs some files from the running copy of Windows.
- shut down and unplug the machine
- remove the ssd from the caddy
- disassemble the machine
- if possible, remove the battery for safety’s sake
- remove the drive from the machine and extract it from any
additional casings it may have - put the ssd into the additional casings
- put the ssd in the machine
- carefully unfold the machine and, if you can, put it on a
trustworthy insulative surface, or else use the display as a
stand (if you don’t understand what i mean, watch some Luis
Rossman videos on YouTube.) - carefully plug the machine on and turn it on (without battery or
enclosure) - if the machine does in fact work, turn it off, wait a bit, unplug
it, and reassemble. - if not, well, try, try again, by formatting the drive using
diskpart and repeating the instructions. See note below. - put the old drive into the caddy if you’d like
If this worked, your machine should work exactly like before, just with faster drive speeds.
How to Format A Drive (this is a dropdown)
- open an
admin
command prompt - run command
diskpart
- run
list disks
- Make CAREFUL note of the disk number of the drive you
want to remove the partition table of - remember this, we’ll call it ‘x’
- Select disk x by running
sel x
- run
clean
- run
exit
until you’ve fully quit cmd - (please note: these instructions are for windows 10)
on the left of the taskbar, in the “type here to
search” box,
typedisk manager
and click “create and format
hard disk partitions” - tell it to activate the freshly formatted drive
(it will be “inactive”), and,
depending on your machine, select
guid. (the specifics are pretty fuzzy in my head)
Future Improvements
- double check cables (screen stopped working after first time we looked at internals(still a mystery how it happened))
- figure out how to do the copy on a seperate machine, eg a desktop, where it is both easier to work, and may copy faster (SATA/M.2/MVME) than using USB