Is there a HP-sanctioned cloning tool for SSD upgrade as bot drive?

[Nick_B1969]

Hi - I have a HP Notebook 15AY163NR which I wish to upgrade with an SSD. 

I understand this may invalidate my warranty. I've done this previously with ease in Dell and Lenovo laptops because their support teams have produced explicit instructions.

As I scan through previous attempts by HP Pavilion owners in this forum, I see a good amount of confusion and despair. My questions:

1) Does HP provide or sanction any cloning/imaging SW for experienced users who wish to upgrade their HDD->SSD?

2) Is there a step by step procedure? Specifically, I'm interested in whether or not partitions on the new SSD must match the original HDD? They may vary in size.

3) I understand Windows 10 license key is digitally stored (in the BIOS?). Is there a more detailed description of how to recover/re-install Windows 10 in the event of a mishap?

Finally, as a new HP owner, I find it puzzling that HP does not have an organized means of supporting their customers. I assume this information exists but it's frustrating to get at it in a reasonable amount of time.

Don't want to beat you guys up on this but your competitors (based on my experience) do a much more customer-friendly job. Maybe because they're not solely focused on jamming a SSD down people's throat to increase their attach rate.

Sorry about the rant -- any help, suggestion, guidance is greatly appreciated.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Yeah I guess still willing to help after getting beat up a bit. The first thing to recognize is that HP does not directly support upgrades at all. They sell you a unit and that is what they support. The only slight nod toward supporting upgrades is this Forum and the handful of fellow end users who are experienced with laptop hardware and willing to help. 

So HP has no recommended cloning software, but the titles most often mentioned by Experts here are Acronis True Image and Macrium Reflect, the latter of which is free. I personally use Acronis and if you buy a Samsung SSD most come with a software disk which supports cloning and is based on Code from the Acronis product. 

There is a sticky at the top of this board that discusses upgrading to an SSD and countless past threads where one of us has walked a customer step by step through the upgrade. I have posted a video showing me doing an upgrade to the Omen HP has loaned me to use for a year and then donate to charity. 

First thing you need is the Service Manual:

Manual

What kind of SSD did you want to install? A 2.5 inch SATA or an M.2?

The Windows 10 Key is not in the BIOS as with Windows 8/8.1 but the effect is the same. Microsoft has a record of every Windows 10 computer ever activated and if you reinstall it will just magically be activated. If you reinstall from an HP recovery disk there is a flag in the BIOS that also will activate. 

Cloning a larger to a smaller drive can be a bit of an issue particularly if it is a big downsize. Also the HP recovery media will not work on small capacity disks. 

So let us know just what you want to do and how you would like to try to do it and I am sure someone here (maybe I) has done exactly that and will walk you through in as minute detail as you need. 

And by the way, you will not void the warranty as long as you don't break anything in the upgrade and obviously HP will not warranty your add-in part. 

If this is "the Answer" please click "Accept as SOlution" to help others find it. 

[Nick_B1969]

Huffer - you're a gentleman and a scholar! Thanks for the breakdown.

1) I'm switching out a 1TB HDD with a 960GB Toshiba OCZ 2.5" SATA SSD.

2) Since it's a new unit, I was going to shrink the partiiton on the HDD with Minitool Partition Wizard and use Minitool Drive Copy to copy an identical image on the SSD.

I'll have a look at Acronis before I start and will share any useful tidbits with the community, if any.

Thanks a million,

Nick