Z440 workstation upgrading

[Dan4252]

Hi people, I am new here, new to the Z440, 71 years old so have patience.

I bought a used Z440 with a 250 Gb SSD on the SATA bus. I will be replacing with a 1 Tb  HDD with Windows 10 pro.

This will be temporary until I can acquire a 1Tb PCIE SSD. My question is what steps would be needed to migrate everything to the new SSD. I am trying to avoid paying $100 for something I already have.

I have more hardware questions I will post later.

TYIA

 Dan.

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

many retail ssd's come with cloning software that allows you to image your existing boot drive onto the new drive

this is done by powering off, connecting the new drive to a free sata port ( a new data cable may be required) then connect the power connector to the new drive and power up the system, windows should either prompt you to prep a new found drive or simply show the new drive on the desktop. once you have the new drive shown on the desktop you can clone your existing "C:" drive to the new drive

once the image /clone is finished you power down remove the existing (original)  drive and connect the new drive to the data/power and boot it should now be using the new drive and at this point you can reconnect the old drive and format it for use as a data drive

if the drive you want does not come with cloning software, there are numerous FREE programs for cloning a drive

https://www.google.com/search?q=free+cloning+software+windows+10&sca_esv=564347028&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS1...

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Straight-Cable-Locking-Drives/dp/B08FTKSJ47/ref=sr_1_6?c=ts&keywords=...

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/copy-your-windows-installation-to-an-ssd

[SDH]

Dan,  Welcome.

That is an excellent workstation and you have some experts here to help you with it. It is fine to have a 1TB HDD documents drive but in this day and age it would be much better to have a 1TB modern 2.5" form factor boot SSD for your OS boot and applications. It is even better to have a 512GB or 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD OS boot/applications drive in a HP PCIe card. It would be even better to have a 512GB boot/applications NVME M.2 SSD plus a 1 TB NVMe documents M.2 documents drive both in a HP Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro PCIe card together.

I'll be posting shortly on this configuration using a ZTD DP PCIe card with those two types of NVMe drives in place and no HDD or 2.5" form factor SATA SSD present, in a Z440. This is a very fast combination.