[Guide for v5-552g-8632] Replacing/Upgrading HDD to another HDD/SDD/SDHD via cloning

violakritter
violakritter Member Posts: 5 New User

I know that it is really a pain to properly look for a guide on how to replace/upgrade our model's HDD because of the lack of Win8 installer, information on the installation, and inexperience. This guide doesn't have any pictures because I realized too late to contribute a guide after successfully upgrading my own HDD to an SSHD.

 

Needed equipments:

- a hard drive enclosure, prefereably with a USB 3.0 interface to make the rate of cloning faster.

- your HDD/SSD/SSHD of choice, this guide will focus on drives equal to our basic hard drive of 500GB and higher

-Macrium Reflect free, my choice of cloning program which made cloning a breeze

 

Steps:

1. Be sure to defrag your system before cloning to make sure that your current HDD's files are in their right places. Cleaning up excess programs/files will also improve cloning speed by reducing amount to clone over.

 

2. If you are using a totally new drive make sure to run Disk management to let your laptop read your drive or else it won't show up on the program. Do this by left clicking windows logo > Computer Management > Disk Management. It is alright if you don't partition your new drive then and there because you will be able to add another partition after you clone. And also, when you clone, you get exactly the same amount of space of your old HDD to reflect on your new one even if it has more storage capacity( example: Old HDD had 240 GB of 460 GB space and your new drive has 1TB, after cloning only 240 GB of 460 GB will reflect on your new HDD, this does not mean however that you have lost the remaining of your storage space. You can utilize the remaining space by running Disk Management again after cloning and setting up another partition, that's how I did it with my 1TB SSHD from 500GB HDD.

 

3. Run Macrium Reflect free. This video will help you guys over all at this point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q2NXYPT0XQ

 

4. Afterwards, just swap your old HDD for your new cloned drive and that should do the trick. We have 17 screws to remove before we are able to take out the bottom cover. The installed HDD spec is at 2.5 inc x 7mm but I used a 9.5mm which fit just fine BUT I would definitely recommend to go for a 7mm drive if possible. Once the bottom cover is removed, you can now take out and swap your hard drive. Ther are no screws soldered into the HDD so it is easy to remove.

 

5. Close up and boot. Initial boot after the swap might take a long while to load but after that, everything should be definitely faster esp if you swapped a SSHD or SSD. No need to do anything else afterward but enjoy the new speed of your system.

 

I was successful in my upgrade and everything is working fine and even faster with my SSHD. Again this should work for drives that have 500GB + space as I don't know how to deal with shrinking your drive space to accomodate smaller storage ssds.

This discussion has been closed.