If you're still using a traditional spinning hard drive on your PC, you're missing something. Replacing it with a solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the best power-efficiency upgrades you can make. Speed ​​up your computer. It will start up faster, programs will launch instantly, and games won't take as long to load anymore.

You can reinstall Windows from scratch, and in some situations that might be preferable, but with the right tools you can be up and running much faster by copying your entire drive to the new SSD.

What you will need

ADATA XPG Spectrix S40G

Obviously, to upgrade to an SSD, you need to buy an SSD. We've got some recommendations, but if you're on a budget, we've got a…separate list of cheap SSDs too. Be sure to purchase the correct form factor for your computer (some laptops use 2.5 inch drives, while others use M.2 or mSATA drives), and grab a drive large enough to hold all your data. If you have a 500GB hard drive, you should probably opt for a similarly sized SSD (or larger, to accommodate your future data).

The only exception is if you're on a desktop computer and have room for multiple hard drives. In this case, you can store Windows and your programs on the SSD drive and put your music, movies, and other media on a second, larger hard drive, though that might be a little trickier, as we'll see later.

Orico hard drive docking station

During this process, you will need your SSD and old hard drive connected to your computer at the same time. If you're using a laptop with only one hard drive slot, that means you'll need an external hard drive. adapter, dock, or attachment that can connect your bare SSD to your computer via USB. (Again, desktop users don't need this enclosure if they have room for two drives in their PC. Install it internally alongside your old hard drive).

There are many disk cloning tools in the market, and unfortunately there is no universal free option. If your drive manufacturer offers a migration program, this may be your best option. For example, if you purchased a Samsung SSD, we recommend downloading Samsung Data Migration and following the instructions in the user guide. Western Digital and SanDisk users can use WD's version of Acronis True Image to copy their data using these instructions.

For this guide, we'll be using Macrium Reflect-This is a free disk cloning tool that works with all brands of hard drives and SSDs. Just download the installer of the free home version and follow the wizard to get it up and running on your PC. It is available to everyone, regardless of the brand of your disc. If your drive manufacturer doesn't offer a migration tool, Macrium Reflect is your best bet.

Once you've gathered the necessary items, it's time to get started.

Back up your data (and free up space)

Before you start manipulating disks and formatting partitions, it is absolutely necessary to… back up your data first. An accidental click can cause you to erase everything, so don't continue until you've saved everything.

If you haven't done a backup yet, check out our favorite software for that job page. Windows also has File History to back up important documents, and an image file can save your entire system. Copying important data to an external hard drive will also do the trick if needed.

If you're upgrading to an SSD that's smaller than your current hard drive, you'll need to be very careful. It's not as common as it used to be, thanks to bigger and cheaper SSDs, but if that's the case for you, you'll need to delete some files and free up space on your hard drive before you can. clone. Otherwise, your data will not fit on the new drive. Once your data is safe, proceed to the next step.

Plug in and initialize your SSD

Plug your SSD into the SATA-USB adapter, then plug it into your computer. If it's a new disk, you probably won't see the disk appear in File Explorer, but don't worry; it just needs to be initialized first. Open the Start menu and type "partitions" in the search field. Click the Create and format hard disk partitions button and Disk Management opens. It will ask you to initialize the disk using GPT or MBR partition table.

I'm going to use GPT for my SSD, since I have a modern PC with UEFI firmware. If you have an older PC with a traditional BIOS, you may need to use an MBR partition table. If you're not sure, research your specific PC or motherboard model to see what kind of firmware it uses.

If you're not prompted to initialize the disk and you don't see it in Disk Management, check that it's properly connected to your computer and that the enclosure or docking station is powered on (if needed) . Check out our guide on troubleshooting a hard drive not showing up to learn more.

Once the disk has been initialized, you should see the disk appear in the bottom pane of Disk Management as unallocated space. From there, you should be good to go.

Clone your disk

Open Macrium Reflect and you should see a list of drives in the main window. Find your current drive – this will be your C: partition with a Windows logo – and select it. Click the Clone this disk button that appears below this disk to launch the clone wizard.

This will bring up a new window where you choose your destination disk – in this case, your empty SSD. If your SSD is the same size as your old disk, make sure the box to the far left of your source disk is checked, as shown above, then click Select Disk to Clone. Choose your SSD from the drop-down list, then click Next.

If your SSD is significantly smaller than your old drive, this may require an additional step. Reflect will attempt to automatically shrink partitions with free space to fit everything on the disk, but in my experience it doesn't always do this intelligently, and may leave out one of Windows' recovery partitions. If you encounter this problem, you can manually drag each partition to the SSD, and click Properties of the cloned partition on your main C: drive to resize it manually.

If your SSD is larger than your old drive, it may be leaving unused space on the drive – in this case you'll want to select your primary partition, click Clone Partition Properties, and expand the drive to fill this empty space.

Click Next and you will be asked if you want to save this backup schedule. You can uncheck this box and click OK to run the backup now, once. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of the discs, so go watch Netflix and come back later.

When it's finished, you can quit Macrium Reflect. You should see your new SSD in File Explorer, along with all of your data.

Install your SSD

Then turn off your computer. It's time to permanently install this SSD in your machine. If you have a laptop with only one hard drive slot, you will need to remove your old hard drive and replace it with your SSD. This operation is a little different on each laptop.

If you have a desktop PC with more than one hard drive slot, you can leave your old hard drive as additional storage and install your SSD alongside.

Reboot from your new disk

Once the SSD installation is complete, you will need to tell your computer to boot from it. (This may not be necessary on laptops with a single disk, but if you're having boot problems, it may help on some PCs). Turn on your computer and go to BIOS/UEFI setup. This procedure differs a bit from PC to PC, but the boot screen usually says something like "Press DEL to enter setup", so you need to press the corresponding key to boot.

From there, look for your BIOS boot options. These are in a different place depending on your computer, but once you find them, select the option to change the boot sequence. Choose your SSD from the list as the first boot drive, then return to the main BIOS menu to exit and save your settings.

Your computer will restart, and if all went well, it should get you back into Windows faster than ever. Open File Explorer and verify that your SSD is the C: drive. If everything looks good, you're ready to go.

If your old drive is still installed, you can erase it and use it to store additional files, or you can disconnect it entirely. Best of all, your computer should be much faster without having to start from scratch.