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Last week we discussed the advantages of SSDs over standard hard disk drives. Today we are going to tell you exactly how to replace your laptop hard disk drive with an SSD.

After you bought you SSD (remembering that you need to buy a unit with the same physical size of your current hard disk drive, 2.5” or 1.8”), you need to copy what is inside your HDD to your SSD. This will include the operating system, all programs and data.

Another option is to simply replace the drives and install the operating system and programs from scratch, but you will need to have all required CDs (operating system, drivers, programs, etc) and your portable must have an optical drive. This option can be tricky especially if you decide to install Windows XP, because several laptops that come with Windows Vista don’t come with drivers for Windows XP (and they are not even available on the manufacturer’s website). The bad thing about this is that on some laptops Windows XP doesn’t recognize the hard disk drive. The solution for this is to create a new Windows XP installation CD including the chipset drivers for Windows XP – so during installation using this CD Windows would be able to detect the hard disk drive and proceed with the installation. This can be done with a program called nLite (http://www.nliteos.com).

Since laptops have only one hard disk drive port, you cannot use your portable to copy data from your HDD to your SSD, as you won’t be able to install the two of them at the same time. The good news is that current laptop HDDs and SSDs is that they all use SATA interface, meaning that they can be installed on your desktop without the need of any kind of adaptor. So the easiest way for copying the contents of one drive to the other is to plug both of them on your desktop and then run a cloning program to copy data from one drive to the other.

The installation is very easy. First you need to remove your laptop hard disk drive: open the HDD compartment, remove the available screws and then remove the drive. This must be done with the laptop turned off (to make sure, take it from the wall and remove its battery before doing this).

You will need two SATA cables (look for them in your motherboard box, you probably have some spare cables there). With the computer turned off, look for empty SATA ports on your motherboard and attach the devices using the cables. Don’t forget to connect them to the power supply as well. You must keep your desktop hard drive installed and boot from it. After Windows is loaded, you should see the laptop HDD and the SSD listed in My Computer (or Computer, in Windows Vista).

The next step is running a cloning program like Norton Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost) or Partition Master (http://www.partition-tool.com) and instruct the program to copy everything that is on your laptop HDD to your new SSD.
After finish copying, install the SSD on your portable and that’s it.