Replacing the optical drive with an SSD

[Stark_Legend]

Hello guys,

I have asked something like this in the past but this is something new and wanted an answer to take action right away.

So my questions are:

1. I am going ahead with replacing the optical drive of my laptop and replace with a caddy to support an SSD or HDD.

2. in the place of the optical drive should I replace with the new SSD or in its place put the old HDD instead?

3. similar to question 2, or will I leave the HDD where its currently placed?

4. I want to use the SSD to boot up the laptop and application etc and HDD for storage, how will I achieve this?

5. I wish to leave the HDD as C drive and make a new name for the SSD?

6. Also for the replacing of the optical drive, can someone find out the caddy size ill need and what type of connector it uses?

if you could give answers to all these, I'll really appreciate it.

Thanks

[Huffer]

Service Manual:

Manual

Fixed, serial ATA, 9.5-mm tray load is the optical drive type so you need a 9.5mm caddy and it is SATA which is about all you will find in the market now, anyway. 

You want to put the new fast SSD inside the laptop and the hard drive in the optical caddy. Windows 10 is always going to have the boot drive as C:\ so if you make the SSD the boot drive (as you should) it will be C:\. 

You can clone the existing installation of Windows on the hard drive to the SSD as long as your SSD is large enough to hold the contents of the current hard drive. 

Post back and let's discuss as I want to get a better understanding of what you want to do and how comfortable you are with various tech tasks. 

[Stark_Legend]

Hi, 

Thanks for the reply. my HDD is currently standing at 900 Gb of 2 Tb. 

my plan is to back up everything from the C drive including all programs software etc onto an external hard drive and start the computer as fresh.

speaking of tech tasks for the initializing of the SSD and HDD once placed in the locations you have recommended, I have seen a few videos on how to replace the optical drive and how to set the SSD to boot up etc in the bios setting and using some programme to create space etc.

Other than that I have very little on how to safely set the drives up.  

If you could provide me with a step by step guide for the procedure of setting it up, that'll be great,

I will commence with the procedure you provide once I have backed up the drive. speaking of which, How do I exactly get everything from the C drive copied onto the external hard drive. I will be using the WD passport 4TB hard drive.

[Huffer]

Not sure what you mean by "safely set the drives up". 

If you simply replace the hard drive with an SSD you will still have the hard drive so it will be backed up. 

How large an SSD did you plan to get? If you are using 900 gigs that is too much to clone even onto a 1 TB SSD. 

In order to copy your existing Windows installation in its entirety onto the 4 TB external drive I would use cloning software like Macrium Reflect Free. Install it onto the laptop and then you can use it to make a bootable "rescue disk" which would allow you to have the laptop hard drive as source and the 4 TB external as target and make a full backup image you could restore in whole or part to a fresh new hard drive or SSD. 

[Stark_Legend]

(Not sure what you mean by "safely set the drives up".) what I meant here is that when replacing the HDD with SSD, will I not have to make the SSD into a C drive.

I will get the HDD backed up as soon as I get the external hard drive.

I will get a 256gb SSD and clone only part of the 900gb i.e. only the most important files and programmes will be cloned.

let's suppose I've added the SSD in place of the HDD and HDD into the new Caddy etc.

what steps do I need to follow to make sure windows 10 be booted up on the SSD and make the HDD as an only storage drive?

[Huffer]

Clone is an all or nothing concept. You are either going to clone or not. I suggest you put the SSD in the laptop. Let's do a clean install of Windows 10 and drivers onto the SSD. For this the hard drive will be totally absent...removed and set aside. Then you can put the hard drive in the caddy and copy whatever data you want to keep over to the SSD. Apps are another matter. They would have to be reinstalled. If you want to keep certain apps you have now without a clean reinstall then we need to move data off the current drive and slim your current Windows installation  down to under 200 gigs. Then we can clone that onto the SSD.