Lenovo Laptop Upgrade

Ducks_And_Netherwort · December 29, 2020, 6:59pm

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.

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)

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,
type disk 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)

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

julian · March 1, 2021, 7:31pm

2021 Update: most of the software for migrating windows to other drives seem to have become pay-only.