Installing an ssd on a laptop instead of a drive. Replacing a DVD drive with an additional HDD or SSD

Due to the constant saving of newly captured photos, music and videos, there was not enough space on the 250 GB hard drive, also called a hard drive, installed in my Samsung-R719 laptop. The question arose of choosing a new hard drive with a larger capacity to replace it.

Another question about choosing a new hard drive may arise if it fails due to aging, magnetic coating applied to the disks, or failure of the electronic board. Service centers do not repair hard drives.

An HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or its modern analogue, an SSD (Solid State Drives) in a computer or laptop is designed for recording, storing and reading information. Without a device for storing information, any computer product will not be able to fully operate.

Choosing a HDD for a laptop

To choose the right hard drive for a laptop, you first need to decide on its basic technical characteristics, such as:

• Hard disk capacity;
• Method of storing information (HDD or SSD);
• The type of connector (interface) with which the hard drive is connected to the laptop;
• Form factor (geometric dimensions).

By memory capacity

Currently, only hard drives with a capacity of 500 GB or more are commercially available for storing information data. This amount of hard drive in your computer will be enough to install all the necessary software, store photos, music and your own videos. If you need to contain an archive of films, you will need a hard drive with a capacity of 1 TB or more. When choosing a hard drive, keep in mind that not all motherboards support hard drives larger than 2 TB.

Do not be surprised if a hard drive installed in a computer, for example, with a capacity of 1 TB, when tested, has a capacity of 0.93 TB. The fact is that the computer processes information in the binary system, in which 1 GB = 1024 MB, and manufacturers indicate the volume of the hard drive in the decimal system (which is not true), considering that 1 TB = 1000 GB. A kind of marketing technique that misleads consumers. In addition, part of the hard drive's memory is used by the computer system to store service information.

By method of storing information

Recently, a new type of hard drive has appeared on the market and is becoming popular, in which information is stored not on magnetic disks, but using microcircuits that are widely used in flash drives connected to a USB port. Such drives are called solid-state drives and are briefly designated SSD (Solid State Drives). Due to the absence of mechanical components, SSD solid-state drives have high operating speed and high reliability. But their cost is more than twice the cost of traditional HDDs. So the choice completely depends on the budget allocated for replacing the hard drive.

There is a third, combined type of hard drive for laptops. On the board of an ordinary hard drive, SSD memory chips are additionally installed, which store information frequently requested by the computer system. This allows you to significantly increase the speed of the disk as a whole with a slight increase in its cost.

When buying a hard drive for a laptop on a limited budget, I recommend paying attention to the combined type of hard drive.

By laptop interface type

There are two ways to find out the type of interface installed in a laptop HDD - informational and mechanical. When using the information method, you need to go to the control panel of the laptop, then to the List of equipment and find out the model of the installed hard drive. Using the model number on the Internet, it is easy to find technical specifications, from which you can find out all the parameters of the hard drive.

The mechanical method is simpler, since it does not require searching and understanding the technical characteristics of the hard drive; it is enough to have only a Phillips-head screwdriver on hand. First you need to close all programs, turn off the laptop and fold it. Next, turn the laptop over and place it so as not to scratch the lid on a soft surface. Usually, on all removable laptop covers it is written what is hidden under them.

Attention, before removing a hard drive, SSD, DVD, memory sticks or any other device, to avoid damage to the laptop, you must turn it off, unplug the power adapter and remove the battery.

Typically, the battery in the laptop case is fixed using two movable latches, which are released by moving them in the direction of the arrow on the laptop lid with sliders connected to them. Both sliders must be simultaneously moved along the arrows on the cover and the battery must be moved to the side, as shown in the photo, and removed.

On the cover of the compartment in which the hard drive is installed, there is the inscription HDD, and under it there is an arrow in the form of a triangle, indicating in which direction you need to slide the cover to remove it after unscrewing the screws located on it.

To separate the connector on the hard drive, there is a tongue made of thick plastic. You need to grab it and move the disk, as shown in the photo, away from the connector.

After removing the hard drive from the laptop, it became obvious that a SATA type serial interface was used to connect the hard drive Serial-ATA. The photo shows this type of connector, with which today the vast majority of laptops, regardless of the manufacturer, connect the hard drive.

And this is what the Serial-ATA connector looks like on a hard or SSD drive. Previously, laptops used an IDE connector to connect hard drives.

Connector IDE It is a set of two rows of pins protruding from the base, as in the photo, so it is easy to distinguish it from the Serial-ATA connector.

Speed ​​characteristics of the SATA Revision specification interface

To connect hard drives, computers use Serial-ATA connectors of one of three specifications.

SATA connectors of all specifications are interchangeable. For example, an SSD with a SATA 3.0 connector can be installed in a laptop that has a SATA 1.0 connector. In this case, the maximum information transfer speed will be limited by the data transfer capability of the SATA 1.0 connector.

The specification of the connector determines only its capabilities, and the actual write-read speed is determined by the technical characteristics of the hard drive installed in the laptop. For example, a modern, one of the best Seagate hard drives with a capacity of 3 TB has a maximum read/write speed of only 150 MB/s for large volumes of information, and only 1 MB/s for small files. Thus, any hard drive will provide maximum data transfer speed, regardless of the computer’s SATA interface specification.

It's another matter if a solid-state SSD is installed in the computer. In some models, the read-write speed is up to 550 MB/second. To implement such a speed, you will only need an interface of the SATA Revision 3.0 specification.

Determining the hard drive form factor

The form factor determines the standard geometric dimensions of a hard drive. In laptops you can find hard drives of the 2.5” form factor (69.9 mm wide) with a case thickness of 7, 9.5 or 15 mm. As a rule, manufacturers install 2.5” form factor hard drives with a thickness of 9.5 mm in laptops.

The form factor of the hard drive can be found out from the technical specifications of the model or you can measure the thickness of the drive with any flat ruler or caliper.

Additional technical specifications
SSD drives

To correctly select a new hard drive, it is enough to take into account its technical characteristics listed above. When choosing a replacement solid-state SSD drive, you must additionally pay attention to the type of memory chips on which the solid-state drive is made, since its service life depends on this.

Types of SSD memory chips

In SSD drives, manufacturers install memory chips of one of three types:

• TLC is the cheapest type of memory with a rewriting resource of at least 1000 cycles;
• MLC is the optimal type of memory for a home computer with a rewriting resource of at least 3,000 cycles;
• 3D NAND is the most expensive and fastest memory with a rewrite life of more than 10,000 cycles.

At first glance, it seems that 3000 rewriting cycles to a disk is not enough, but if you do the calculation, then for a 240 GB SSD disk this memory resource will be enough for decades of intensive use.

For example, my computer has a 240 GB SSD drive. I work on a laptop every day, and additionally, it records 24/7 from three high-definition street surveillance cameras.

Let's calculate the real rewriting resource of an SSD disk: - 240 GB × 3000 cycles = 720,000 GB = 720 TB. No more than 30 GB of video and other information is recorded per day, less than 10.8 TB per year. Let's divide the disk resource by the annual recording volume: 720/10.8= 66 years old.

Calculations have shown that a solid-state SSD disk assembled from microcircuits of any type of memory in a home computer will become morally obsolete before it exhausts its resource.

How to transfer system and files
in a laptop from the old hard drive to the new one

Having decided on the basic technical parameters of the hard drive, which guarantee the possibility of installing it in a laptop, you can begin to select and purchase it.

New hard drives do not have Windows installed, and after connecting it to the laptop, you will need to install Windows with all the software necessary for operation. This is a rather labor-intensive process, as it requires care, patience and a lot of time.

The task can be simplified using special programs for cloning hard drives, for example, Paragon Drive Copy. The program supports the Russian language and any laptop user can understand it.

In order to use Paragon Drive Copy, you need to install it on your old hard drive, connect the new drive to your laptop, run the cloning program and wait until all the information is copied. Then install the new disk in the laptop and you can immediately work on it, as if the hard disk had never changed.

How to install a second hard drive in a laptop

To transfer the system and files (cloning) from an old disk, you need to connect two hard drives to the laptop at the same time, which is not provided for by its design. There are two ways to solve this problem:

• Use a special adapter container in the form of an external box;
• Install an adapter container instead of a DVD drive, which will allow you to add a second hard drive to your laptop.

Both options are equivalent and it all depends on your future plans for using the old hard drive. If you plan to use the removed hard drive as a USB flash drive for storing and transferring large amounts of information, then you should purchase an external adapter container. And if a hard drive is required to expand the total storage capacity on a laptop, then you will need to install an adapter container instead of a standard DVD drive.

I had to use both options. Several years ago, when it was necessary to increase the capacity of the hard drive, and a DVD drive was still in demand, I had to buy an external USB adapter container in the form of a remote box. And the second time, when I wanted to replace the mechanical hard drive with an SSD drive in order to increase the performance of the laptop and increase the storage capacity of information. The DVD drive was no longer needed and instead an adapter container for a second hard drive was installed in the laptop.

Using a USB adapter container

The market offers a wide range of adapter containers in the form of an external box, which are designed to connect a hard drive to a laptop via its external USB interface.

When choosing, the main thing is that the form factor and internal interface of the adapter match the form factor and interface of the hard drive. There are also adapters with which the hard drive is connected directly to the laptop connector. They cost less, but are inconvenient to use because, if accidentally touched, such an adapter can easily be broken.

The hard drive adapter container is a plastic or metal box with an external mini-USB connector and an operation indicator LED. The adapter container is connected to the computer using a standard flexible cord with connectors at the ends of mini-USB and USB.

Since 2.5-inch hard drives consume little current, the power provided by the laptop’s USB bus is quite sufficient and no additional power source is required.

To install a hard drive into the adapter container, you need to remove the cover from it, place the hard drive in it and slide it onto the interface connector. After this, close the lid and use a standard USB cable to connect the adapter container to the computer. Now the additional hard drive will work like a familiar USB flash drive. Thanks to the use of an adapter container, it will be possible to quickly connect a hard drive to any laptop or desktop computer.

Instead of a DVD drive

Today, DVD discs have lost their relevance, and optical DVD drives installed in laptops are only collecting dust. To expand the technical capabilities of laptops, the industry has mastered the production of special adapters that allow you to install a second hard drive in a laptop instead of a useless DVD drive.

The form factor and interface connector are the same for all DVD drives installed in laptops, and they come in thicknesses of 9.5 mm and 12.7 mm. Therefore, before purchasing an adapter, you should find out the thickness of the DVD drive installed in your laptop.

There are two ways to determine the size of a DVD drive. Go to the “Device Manager” of your computer and find its technical specifications using the drive model on the Internet. But it is more advisable to remove the drive from the laptop and measure its thickness, since at the same time it will be possible to study how the drive is designed and figure out how it is removed.

To remove the DVD drive from the laptop case, you need to unscrew just one screw using a Phillips screwdriver, which is located on the side of the bottom cover of the laptop in the area where the drive is located. This screw usually has ODD next to it and an arrow pointing to the head of the screw. After this, the drive can be easily removed.

Since the thickness of adapters for hard drives differs significantly, it is easy to determine it by eye, but to avoid mistakes, it is better to measure it with any ruler or caliper. Measuring the size of the DVD drive installed in my Samsung-R719 laptop using a caliper showed that its thickness is 12.7 mm.

Where can I buy an adapter to replace a DVD drive?

After determining the form factor of the DVD drive installed in the laptop compartment, you can start purchasing an adapter. Computer and digital equipment stores have a large selection of Chinese hard drive adapters for installation instead of a DVD drive, costing around $15.

Exactly such adapters, made in China, can be purchased in the Aliexpress online store for $4, although you will have to wait for delivery from a month to two.

My choice fell on an adapter made of aluminum alloy, since the hard drive heats up during operation, and metal dissipates heat better. The screw method was chosen for fixing the hard drive in the adapter as it is more reliable. 40 days after payment for the order, the adapter was received by mail. Upon opening the soft packaging and careful inspection, no defects were found. There was also a small Phillips screwdriver in the package.

Replacing a DVD drive with an adapter with a hard drive

Before installing the hard drive into the adapter, you need to perform preparatory work, which consists of transferring the corner with the threaded hole and the front panel from the DVD drive to the purchased adapter.

A corner with a threaded axle for fixing the DVD drive in the laptop case is located next to its interface connector and secured with two screws. The adapter did not have a corner, but there were two threaded holes in the required location.

Therefore, I had to remove the corner from the DVD drive and, observing the orientation, secure it to the adapter using the unscrewed screws.

The decorative plastic panel installed on the purchased adapter (lower in the photo) differed in shape and size from the panel installed on the laptop DVD drive. Therefore, in order to avoid large gaps and the appearance of the laptop, I had to remove the panel from the DVD drive case and install it on the hard drive adapter case.

The photo shows a laptop with an adapter installed with the front panel installed by the manufacturer. As you can see, the appearance of the laptop is not pleasing to the eye.

Changing the panel is not a difficult task if you know where the latches are and how to release them. It is better to remove the panel from the adapter first, since it will no longer be needed and if the latches accidentally break, this will not lead to undesirable consequences.

In a DVD drive removed from a laptop, the pull-out tray for installing disks, on which the front panel is attached, is recessed, and it is impossible to reach the latches in this position. But to extend it, there is a small hole on the panel, into which it is enough to push a metal rod, such as a needle or a straightened paper clip, using a couple of centimeters of pressure.

The decorative front panel on the DVD drive pull-out tray is secured with two latches. One latch, shown in the photo, is located on the edge of the right side of the panel. To release the latch, just use the blade of a screwdriver to press it in the recess provided for this.

The second latch is located on the opposite side of the panel and is slightly removed from its end. It is released from entanglement in the same way.

The front panel is removed from the adapter in the same way. After removing it, you need to install the removed front panel from the DVD drive onto the adapter and you can install the hard drive.

After installing the hard drive, you need to secure it in the adapter by screwing in four screws that are already partially screwed into the adapter housing. The screws must be screwed in such a way that they do not protrude, otherwise it will be impossible to insert the adapter into the laptop compartment.

In this hard drive adapter model, to the left of SATA there is a switch for adapting hard drives from different manufacturers:

• A: for HP/Cony;
• B: for Dell/IBM;
• C: for Other Brand.

A Seagate hard drive was installed, which was not on the list, so at random the switch slider was set to position B.

The hard drive adapter is ready to replace the DVD drive, and now it's time to insert it into the laptop bay.

The adapter easily fit completely into the laptop compartment, and the front panel merged with the body, just like the front panel of the previously installed DVD drive. All that remains is to secure the adapter by tightening one screw on the bottom of the laptop and you can check the operation of the hard drive.

After installing the battery and turning on the computer, the Windows system recognized the adapter, installed the driver, and the partitions of the additional hard drive became available for work. When writing and reading from the second hard drive, the blue LED on the adapter panel blinked, and in sleep mode it was constantly on.

By installing a hard drive adapter into a laptop instead of a useless DVD drive, it became possible to store up to 1.1 TB of information. In addition, by placing Windows system files and storing frequently used information on the SSD, the acoustic noise that the hard drive used to emit has disappeared, making the laptop virtually silent.

Every day more and more users are thinking about the question: how to replace the HDD in a laptop with an SSD? This topic is especially relevant now: the hard drive, like in a mobile computer, is becoming obsolete.

To change or not to change? That is the question

For many years, there has been a debate about whether the hard drive will be replaced by solid-state drives or not. Power users value SSDs for speed and reliability. However, every medal has two sides, so it should be noted that the reactivity of the drive is very expensive.

The high cost of SSDs for the most part prevents them from becoming widely used. Many owners of PCs and laptops, whose activities require the best performance indicators, still renounce HDDs.

Pros and cons of SSD and HDD

The fact is that HDD has a number of disadvantages compared to SSD:

As a rule, it is because of them that many decide to replace them, while one cannot ignore the advantages of hard drives over solid-state drives:

• Volume. At the moment, ordinary users have access to from 320 GB to 10 TB. And the same SSDs in regular stores can be found with a maximum capacity of 2TB. We are not talking about drives for industrial or server equipment, but only about those that can be bought at the nearest computer market.
• Price. She is much lower. If you compare the cost of a popular 2 TB hard drive with an SSD of the same capacity, it turns out that a solid-state drive is 16 times more expensive than an HDD.
• With SSD, it is almost impossible to recover deleted data due to the storage method. The maximum that can be done is to take the drive to a laboratory where the necessary equipment will be available.

Based on the above, we can conclude that if the speed and security of data is more important than its volume. Do you value low power consumption? You can safely switch to an SSD drive.

What HDDs are used in the laptop?

Currently, laptops use 2.5-inch hard drives. This means that inside there are “pancakes” of this exact diameter. Some MacBooks have 1.8″ hard drives, but this is a separate topic and we won’t talk about them.

Each disk has a set of characteristics, such as:

• manufacturer;
• volume: the amount of data that can be stored, usually in GB;
• buffer memory: fast memory or cash;
• rotation speed: the number of revolutions per minute made by the spindle;
• connection interface: connector through which the drive is connected to the board.

The price of the HDD depends on the set of these characteristics and their quality. The most common hard drive option at the time of writing has:

• connection interface - SATA III;
• volume - 2 TB;
• - 5400 rpm;
• buffer memory - 32 MB.

What SSDs can be installed instead of a hard drive?

The main difference between a solid-state drive and an HDD is that data is written non-mechanically. Simply put, information is recorded on microcircuits. Due to this, high and low noise levels are achieved.

Such drives have 4 common form factors:

• PCI-E AIC (add-in-card);
• M.2 2280;
• mSATA;
• 2.5 in.

In the context of this article, which is devoted to the question of how to replace the HDD in a laptop with an SSD, all attention will be paid to drives of the latest format, i.e. 2.5 inches. They and the HDD have the same shape and SATA III connection interface. A similar view allows you to remove the disk and install an SSD in its place, screwing it to the same slide and closing it with the same lid.

mSata form factor SSD

Some laptops also support mSata. They have a special III on the motherboard and two places for screws to secure the drive. Such SSDs can be used either as independent storage devices or in combination with one, depending on the design of the laptop.

In many Lenovo models, such an SSD drive acts as additional storage (as a cache). There are laptops that have mSata installed in conjunction with the hard drive and used as a system partition, that is, nothing is installed on it except the operating system. Thanks to this solution, the loading of the OS is accelerated, and the data storage volume remains quite large, since the information is written to disk.

SSD form factor 2.5″

To successfully replace an HDD with an SSD, you must choose the right drive. At the moment, we managed to decide that it should be 2.5 inches and connected via SATA III. It is also worth paying attention to the thickness of the SSD, since for hard drives it ranges from 5 to 9.5 mm. If you buy an SSD that is too thick, the disk lid on your laptop may not close properly.

Then it's a matter of taste. For home use, 100-300 GB is considered sufficient. According to Tom Hardware, the best SSD for users is recognized with its affordable price of less than $100 and has excellent characteristics. If you are an inexperienced user, just look for something similar in description and you won’t go wrong.

Replacing an HDD with an SSD in a laptop

The process of changing a hard drive to an SSD is the same as installing a new hard drive.

The first thing to do if the old hard drive is working is to copy the information from it to another medium. Important data must be transferred to the cloud, to a USB flash drive or removable drive.

You can buy a case for HDD 2.5, install the old hard drive in it and use it in the future as a mobile storage medium.

Replacement process

First you need to remove the battery. If it is non-removable, turn off the computer, remove the cover, and remove the battery connector from the motherboard.

1. Unscrew the screws that hold the disk cover in place and remove it.
2. Remove the screws holding the hard drive slide.
3. Pull the slide away from the connector to disconnect the HDD and remove it from the case.
4. Remove the screws securing the drive to the slide and remove it.
5. Take the drive, install it in the slide in the same way as the hard drive was, and tighten the screws.
6. Lower the SSD and carriers into the case and slide them into the slot to connect the drive.
7. Screw the slide fasteners into the housing.
8. Close the cover and tighten the screws.
9. Connect the battery in the same way as you disconnected it and close the cover if necessary.
10. Turn on the laptop and check the functionality of the SSD.

The minimum check would be to go into the BIOS or UEFI and see how the drive was detected. In most laptop models, this can be done by pressing the DEL or F2 key (in some Enter) immediately after turning it on.

If the drive is working and installed correctly, its name and serial number will be indicated in the information section. Additionally, you can run tests using the utility and check other things, for example, recording speed.

The first thing to do is copy the information. This is written above. The principle of operation for all computers in this regard is the same.

1. Disconnect the battery from the HP laptop. If the battery is removable, like this model, then you can do it simply:

• unlock the battery lock;
• pull the second latch;
• remove the battery from the connector.

2. Using a Phillips screwdriver, remove the screws that hold the hard drive cover in the case. In most models it is small, about ½ of the entire back surface. Remove the cover; you may have to apply a little force, as it may be secured with additional latches from the inside.

3. Unscrew the screws that hold the hard drive carrier. There may be 2 or 4 of them. Move the hard drive away from the connector to disconnect it.

4. Pry up the mount and remove the screws. If the hard drive is disconnected from the connector, this will be easy to do.

5. Unscrew the screws that hold the HDD in the slide. Usually they are located at one end and the other, 2 pieces each.

6. Install the SSD in the carrier instead of the hard drive and tighten the screws on both sides.

7. Install the disk mount along with the drive into the case and push it into the slot. Screw the slide screws back in.

8. Close the housing cover and install the screws in the same order in which you removed them.

9. Connect the battery, that is, install it until it clicks. Push the battery lock back into position.

10. Turn on the laptop and check that the SSD is detected in the system; you can perform additional testing.

This is how the HDD in a laptop is replaced with an SSD. In the vast majority of models, this work is done the same way. The differences usually lie in the way the battery is disassembled and disconnected.

In this section, we will look at options for upgrading a hard drive to an SSD drive in laptops manufactured by Acer. For clarity, an example will be given of a model in which the battery is built-in, and almost complete disassembly is required.

First of all, we still copy important data. Here the amount of information was small, so the transfer was made to a USB flash drive. Turn off the laptop and start replacing.

1. It is necessary to remove the back cover of the case. To do this, remove all the screws from the back side.

2. Remove the back part, carefully prying it around the perimeter. If the cover does not budge on any side, stop and check that all screws are removed.

3. Disconnect the battery; to do this, remove the cable from the connector by gently pulling it towards you. Do not break the plug, otherwise you will have to completely replace the battery.

4. In this model, the hard drive is not secured in the slide, but is simply inserted into the connector on the board between the case mounts. In order to replace the HDD with an SSD in a laptop, just remove the old disk by pulling it away from the connector. Then put the drive in its place.

5. Reconnect the battery. Make sure that the connector is straight and not damaged.

6. Replace the housing cover and tighten all screws. Make sure that the back does not pinch the wires.

7. Turn on the laptop, check the functionality of the solid-state drive in any way. If the computer does not respond to the power button, you will have to disassemble it again to check the battery.

In this way, the HDD in a laptop is replaced with an SSD for some models from the manufacturer Acer. You can rely on these instructions if you need to update other computers with a built-in battery.

Replacing HDD with SSD in Lenovo laptop

You won’t be able to find a big difference here from the previous two options. It can be noted that replacing the disk with an SSD drive in this option combined the two previous ones. This Lenovo model has a removable battery, but the HDD mount is located under the back of the case. There is no separate cover here.

Following the main principle, you need to transfer the necessary data to another location or prepare an HDD case to mount your old disk into. This time we won’t copy anything, we’ll insert the hard drive into the Case and start using it as a portable “flash drive”.

1. First you need to disconnect the battery. The battery of this model is removable, so you need to remove the lock and remove the battery.

2. Unscrew all the screws located at the bottom one by one. Be sure to check if your model has additional screws on the side.

3. Carefully remove the cover, unsnapping each fastener one by one. If the case does not budge, check that all screws have been removed.

4. Remove the screw that holds the hard drive carrier. In this example there is only one. Lift the HDD mounts and remove it from the laptop.

5. Use a screwdriver to remove the screws that hold the slide to the hard drive. In this model, the mounts have shielded foil, which protects the disk controller from shorting to the case.

6. Install the new SSD drive into the HDD mount and return it to its place, securing it with a screw.

7. Close the laptop with the bottom of the case, carefully snapping all the fasteners into place. Tighten the screws in the same order and connect the battery.

8. Turn on the laptop and test the drive in Bios or with some utility, for example, Victoria.

The ways to change an HDD to an SSD in a laptop can be listed endlessly. The fact is that each model has its own disassembly principle. Therefore, if you are not qualified and have no experience in this matter, it is recommended to turn to professionals.

Replacing your hard drive with a solid state drive will increase your laptop's performance by an order of magnitude. However, be sure to take into account the processor parameters and the amount of RAM. If you have a very weak CPU installed and no more than 2 GB of RAM, then the system will slow down in any case, even with an SSD.

Evaluate your computer adequately, make only the necessary changes to it, and it will serve faithfully until you buy a new one.

Why do you need to install a hard drive instead of a disk drive in a laptop? Increasingly, a solid-state drive is being used as the main storage device. Installing an SSD in a laptop makes the system boot and run faster. However, such devices, as a rule, have modest volumes - there is nowhere to store hundreds of gigabytes of films, games and other important information.

With a desktop computer everything is simple - you can install at least a few additional drives. There is no free space in the laptop. However, it is entirely possible to remove the disk drive, which is becoming increasingly useless, and install an SSD or HDD () in the laptop instead of a DVD drive. It is not possible to connect the hard drive directly - in laptops, disk drives and storage devices use different connectors. Adapters from DVD to HDD-SATA come to the rescue (You can also find adapters to HDD-IDE, but they are only suitable for old laptops).

Now let's figure out how to install a second hard drive in a laptop using an adapter?

It makes no difference what type of disk is installed in the optical drive bay of a laptop - both HDD instead of DVD and SSD will connect the same way. It should be taken into account that computer manufacturers do not provide for such a modification - there are no official adapters, only Chinese models (for example, Optibay). However, due to the very simple design of the adapter, there is no need to worry about its quality. But the user takes full responsibility for possible problems - he will lose the warranty on the laptop.

Before connecting an additional SSD to a laptop or installing an HDD in the DVD drive bay of a laptop, you need to ensure safety: disconnect the battery, and also ground yourself - touch, for example, the battery to remove static voltage from your hands, which can destroy the components of the computer's motherboard.

Adapter selection

Many manufacturers produce HDD sleds for laptops. There is no significant difference between them - you just need to choose a suitable HDD adapter. A laptop can have one of two types of drives installed:

• 12.7 mm high - in older models;
• 9.5 mm - in modern ultra-thin computers.

It's okay if the thin adapter is used for a laptop with a high bay - installation will go without problems. But it is better to choose a suitable adapter so that replacing the CD drive with an SSD in a laptop does not cause difficulties. In addition, it is worth buying sleds with special brackets, with which they cling to the outer part of the computer case; it will be easier to remove the device if necessary.

Disabling the drive and HDD

Creating a laptop with two hard drives is possible in any case, the only differences will be in how the computer case is disassembled. Models from different manufacturers may have their own characteristics, but the general procedure is as follows:

1. The battery is disconnected. If it is non-removable, the battery connector is disconnected from the motherboard.
2. On the bottom surface of the case, the screws holding the drive are unscrewed.
3. The DVD drive is removed.
4. The cover covering the main parts of the laptop is removed. If there is a separate compartment for the drive, as on Sony computers, there is no need to completely disassemble the case.
5. The HDD is removed from the device.

If you are installing a second hard drive in a laptop without replacing the old HDD, you do not need to disconnect it.

Unlike a desktop computer, wires and plugs do not need to be disconnected by hand. They are firmly fixed and will turn off themselves when the devices are removed, so no problems should arise.

Connecting the hard drive to the adapter

1. A solid-state drive is installed in place of the old HDD, and the removed hard drive is connected to the adapter;
2. Both bays accommodate SSD drives;
3. Using a slide, the drive is replaced with an SSD or any other hard drive, the old drive remains in its place.

In any case, you need to install the operating system on a faster drive - either an SSD instead of a DVD, or a disk installed in the main location. This is due to the fact that the SATA cable intended for the DVD drive is 4 times slower than the cable connecting the drive to the motherboard. Therefore, with an HDD installed instead of a drive, the system will boot much longer and, in general, the laptop will work slower. The performance of the SSD somewhat compensates for this difference.

Replacing a DVD with a hard drive is as follows:

1. The disk is detached from the original slide, to which it is screwed with 4 screws;
2. The hard drive is inserted into the Optibay adapter and connected to the connectors. On the opposite side, a plastic spacer is inserted, which comes complete with the adapter;
3. Screws are screwed into the underside of the slide to hold the drive in place;
4. The fasteners are removed from the original drive and screwed to the adapter;
5. A plug is placed on the outside of the adapter;
6. The device is inserted into the laptop drive bay;
7. After this, all that remains is to insert the SSD into the slide from the old hard drive, tighten their screws and install the device in its place. Next, the computer case is assembled in reverse order.

Problems with the laptop detecting the second drive

In some cases, the BIOS does not recognize the second hard drive. It's not a problem. This is due to the features of the BIOS itself. The system will boot as normal. If you have installed an SSD instead of a disk drive and want to install the system on it, the program will normally detect the disk.

If the existing OS does not see the second disk, the reason may be that it is not formatted. If you go to the Disk Management system utility, the new hard drive will be detected. You need to format it in the NTFS file system and it will appear in Explorer.

Thus, even an inexperienced user can replace a DVD drive with an SSD, since installing a second hard drive on a laptop is very simple. The main thing is to choose the right adapter and not lose the screws when disassembling and reassembling the computer. Below, you can watch a video on installing a hard drive instead of a DVD drive in a laptop and MacBook.

Due to the constant saving of newly captured photos, music and videos, there was not enough space on the 250 GB hard drive, also called a hard drive, installed in my Samsung-R719 laptop. The question arose of choosing a new hard drive with a larger capacity to replace it.

Another question about choosing a new hard drive may arise if it fails due to aging, magnetic coating applied to the disks, or failure of the electronic board. Service centers do not repair hard drives.

An HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or its modern analogue, an SSD (Solid State Drives) in a computer or laptop is designed for recording, storing and reading information. Without a device for storing information, any computer product will not be able to fully operate.

Choosing a HDD for a laptop

To choose the right hard drive for a laptop, you first need to decide on its basic technical characteristics, such as:

• Hard disk capacity;
• Method of storing information (HDD or SSD);
• The type of connector (interface) with which the hard drive is connected to the laptop;
• Form factor (geometric dimensions).

By memory capacity

Currently, only hard drives with a capacity of 500 GB or more are commercially available for storing information data. This amount of hard drive in your computer will be enough to install all the necessary software, store photos, music and your own videos. If you need to contain an archive of films, you will need a hard drive with a capacity of 1 TB or more. When choosing a hard drive, keep in mind that not all motherboards support hard drives larger than 2 TB.

Do not be surprised if a hard drive installed in a computer, for example, with a capacity of 1 TB, when tested, has a capacity of 0.93 TB. The fact is that the computer processes information in the binary system, in which 1 GB = 1024 MB, and manufacturers indicate the volume of the hard drive in the decimal system (which is not true), considering that 1 TB = 1000 GB. A kind of marketing technique that misleads consumers. In addition, part of the hard drive's memory is used by the computer system to store service information.

By method of storing information

Recently, a new type of hard drive has appeared on the market and is becoming popular, in which information is stored not on magnetic disks, but using microcircuits that are widely used in flash drives connected to a USB port. Such drives are called solid-state drives and are briefly designated SSD (Solid State Drives). Due to the absence of mechanical components, SSD solid-state drives have high operating speed and high reliability. But their cost is more than twice the cost of traditional HDDs. So the choice completely depends on the budget allocated for replacing the hard drive.

There is a third, combined type of hard drive for laptops. On the board of an ordinary hard drive, SSD memory chips are additionally installed, which store information frequently requested by the computer system. This allows you to significantly increase the speed of the disk as a whole with a slight increase in its cost.

When buying a hard drive for a laptop on a limited budget, I recommend paying attention to the combined type of hard drive.

By laptop interface type

There are two ways to find out the type of interface installed in a laptop HDD - informational and mechanical. When using the information method, you need to go to the control panel of the laptop, then to the List of equipment and find out the model of the installed hard drive. Using the model number on the Internet, it is easy to find technical specifications, from which you can find out all the parameters of the hard drive.

The mechanical method is simpler, since it does not require searching and understanding the technical characteristics of the hard drive; it is enough to have only a Phillips-head screwdriver on hand. First you need to close all programs, turn off the laptop and fold it. Next, turn the laptop over and place it so as not to scratch the lid on a soft surface. Usually, on all removable laptop covers it is written what is hidden under them.

Attention, before removing a hard drive, SSD, DVD, memory sticks or any other device, to avoid damage to the laptop, you must turn it off, unplug the power adapter and remove the battery.

Typically, the battery in the laptop case is fixed using two movable latches, which are released by moving them in the direction of the arrow on the laptop lid with sliders connected to them. Both sliders must be simultaneously moved along the arrows on the cover and the battery must be moved to the side, as shown in the photo, and removed.

On the cover of the compartment in which the hard drive is installed, there is the inscription HDD, and under it there is an arrow in the form of a triangle, indicating in which direction you need to slide the cover to remove it after unscrewing the screws located on it.

To separate the connector on the hard drive, there is a tongue made of thick plastic. You need to grab it and move the disk, as shown in the photo, away from the connector.

After removing the hard drive from the laptop, it became obvious that a SATA type serial interface was used to connect the hard drive Serial-ATA. The photo shows this type of connector, with which today the vast majority of laptops, regardless of the manufacturer, connect the hard drive.

And this is what the Serial-ATA connector looks like on a hard or SSD drive. Previously, laptops used an IDE connector to connect hard drives.

Connector IDE It is a set of two rows of pins protruding from the base, as in the photo, so it is easy to distinguish it from the Serial-ATA connector.

Speed ​​characteristics of the SATA Revision specification interface

To connect hard drives, computers use Serial-ATA connectors of one of three specifications.

SATA connectors of all specifications are interchangeable. For example, an SSD with a SATA 3.0 connector can be installed in a laptop that has a SATA 1.0 connector. In this case, the maximum information transfer speed will be limited by the data transfer capability of the SATA 1.0 connector.

The specification of the connector determines only its capabilities, and the actual write-read speed is determined by the technical characteristics of the hard drive installed in the laptop. For example, a modern, one of the best Seagate hard drives with a capacity of 3 TB has a maximum read/write speed of only 150 MB/s for large volumes of information, and only 1 MB/s for small files. Thus, any hard drive will provide maximum data transfer speed, regardless of the computer’s SATA interface specification.

It's another matter if a solid-state SSD is installed in the computer. In some models, the read-write speed is up to 550 MB/second. To implement such a speed, you will only need an interface of the SATA Revision 3.0 specification.

Determining the hard drive form factor

The form factor determines the standard geometric dimensions of a hard drive. In laptops you can find hard drives of the 2.5” form factor (69.9 mm wide) with a case thickness of 7, 9.5 or 15 mm. As a rule, manufacturers install 2.5” form factor hard drives with a thickness of 9.5 mm in laptops.

The form factor of the hard drive can be found out from the technical specifications of the model or you can measure the thickness of the drive with any flat ruler or caliper.

Additional technical specifications
SSD drives

To correctly select a new hard drive, it is enough to take into account its technical characteristics listed above. When choosing a replacement solid-state SSD drive, you must additionally pay attention to the type of memory chips on which the solid-state drive is made, since its service life depends on this.

Types of SSD memory chips

In SSD drives, manufacturers install memory chips of one of three types:

• TLC is the cheapest type of memory with a rewriting resource of at least 1000 cycles;
• MLC is the optimal type of memory for a home computer with a rewriting resource of at least 3,000 cycles;
• 3D NAND is the most expensive and fastest memory with a rewrite life of more than 10,000 cycles.

At first glance, it seems that 3000 rewriting cycles to a disk is not enough, but if you do the calculation, then for a 240 GB SSD disk this memory resource will be enough for decades of intensive use.

For example, my computer has a 240 GB SSD drive. I work on a laptop every day, and additionally, it records 24/7 from three high-definition street surveillance cameras.

Let's calculate the real rewriting resource of an SSD disk: - 240 GB × 3000 cycles = 720,000 GB = 720 TB. No more than 30 GB of video and other information is recorded per day, less than 10.8 TB per year. Let's divide the disk resource by the annual recording volume: 720/10.8= 66 years old.

Calculations have shown that a solid-state SSD disk assembled from microcircuits of any type of memory in a home computer will become morally obsolete before it exhausts its resource.

How to transfer system and files
in a laptop from the old hard drive to the new one

Having decided on the basic technical parameters of the hard drive, which guarantee the possibility of installing it in a laptop, you can begin to select and purchase it.

New hard drives do not have Windows installed, and after connecting it to the laptop, you will need to install Windows with all the software necessary for operation. This is a rather labor-intensive process, as it requires care, patience and a lot of time.

The task can be simplified using special programs for cloning hard drives, for example, Paragon Drive Copy. The program supports the Russian language and any laptop user can understand it.

In order to use Paragon Drive Copy, you need to install it on your old hard drive, connect the new drive to your laptop, run the cloning program and wait until all the information is copied. Then install the new disk in the laptop and you can immediately work on it, as if the hard disk had never changed.

How to install a second hard drive in a laptop

To transfer the system and files (cloning) from an old disk, you need to connect two hard drives to the laptop at the same time, which is not provided for by its design. There are two ways to solve this problem:

• Use a special adapter container in the form of an external box;
• Install an adapter container instead of a DVD drive, which will allow you to add a second hard drive to your laptop.

Both options are equivalent and it all depends on your future plans for using the old hard drive. If you plan to use the removed hard drive as a USB flash drive for storing and transferring large amounts of information, then you should purchase an external adapter container. And if a hard drive is required to expand the total storage capacity on a laptop, then you will need to install an adapter container instead of a standard DVD drive.

I had to use both options. Several years ago, when it was necessary to increase the capacity of the hard drive, and a DVD drive was still in demand, I had to buy an external USB adapter container in the form of a remote box. And the second time, when I wanted to replace the mechanical hard drive with an SSD drive in order to increase the performance of the laptop and increase the storage capacity of information. The DVD drive was no longer needed and instead an adapter container for a second hard drive was installed in the laptop.

Using a USB adapter container

The market offers a wide range of adapter containers in the form of an external box, which are designed to connect a hard drive to a laptop via its external USB interface.

When choosing, the main thing is that the form factor and internal interface of the adapter match the form factor and interface of the hard drive. There are also adapters with which the hard drive is connected directly to the laptop connector. They cost less, but are inconvenient to use because, if accidentally touched, such an adapter can easily be broken.

The hard drive adapter container is a plastic or metal box with an external mini-USB connector and an operation indicator LED. The adapter container is connected to the computer using a standard flexible cord with connectors at the ends of mini-USB and USB.

Since 2.5-inch hard drives consume little current, the power provided by the laptop’s USB bus is quite sufficient and no additional power source is required.

To install a hard drive into the adapter container, you need to remove the cover from it, place the hard drive in it and slide it onto the interface connector. After this, close the lid and use a standard USB cable to connect the adapter container to the computer. Now the additional hard drive will work like a familiar USB flash drive. Thanks to the use of an adapter container, it will be possible to quickly connect a hard drive to any laptop or desktop computer.

Instead of a DVD drive

Today, DVD discs have lost their relevance, and optical DVD drives installed in laptops are only collecting dust. To expand the technical capabilities of laptops, the industry has mastered the production of special adapters that allow you to install a second hard drive in a laptop instead of a useless DVD drive.

The form factor and interface connector are the same for all DVD drives installed in laptops, and they come in thicknesses of 9.5 mm and 12.7 mm. Therefore, before purchasing an adapter, you should find out the thickness of the DVD drive installed in your laptop.

There are two ways to determine the size of a DVD drive. Go to the “Device Manager” of your computer and find its technical specifications using the drive model on the Internet. But it is more advisable to remove the drive from the laptop and measure its thickness, since at the same time it will be possible to study how the drive is designed and figure out how it is removed.

To remove the DVD drive from the laptop case, you need to unscrew just one screw using a Phillips screwdriver, which is located on the side of the bottom cover of the laptop in the area where the drive is located. This screw usually has ODD next to it and an arrow pointing to the head of the screw. After this, the drive can be easily removed.

Since the thickness of adapters for hard drives differs significantly, it is easy to determine it by eye, but to avoid mistakes, it is better to measure it with any ruler or caliper. Measuring the size of the DVD drive installed in my Samsung-R719 laptop using a caliper showed that its thickness is 12.7 mm.

Where can I buy an adapter to replace a DVD drive?

After determining the form factor of the DVD drive installed in the laptop compartment, you can start purchasing an adapter. Computer and digital equipment stores have a large selection of Chinese hard drive adapters for installation instead of a DVD drive, costing around $15.

Exactly such adapters, made in China, can be purchased in the Aliexpress online store for $4, although you will have to wait for delivery from a month to two.

My choice fell on an adapter made of aluminum alloy, since the hard drive heats up during operation, and metal dissipates heat better. The screw method was chosen for fixing the hard drive in the adapter as it is more reliable. 40 days after payment for the order, the adapter was received by mail. Upon opening the soft packaging and careful inspection, no defects were found. There was also a small Phillips screwdriver in the package.

Replacing a DVD drive with an adapter with a hard drive

Before installing the hard drive into the adapter, you need to perform preparatory work, which consists of transferring the corner with the threaded hole and the front panel from the DVD drive to the purchased adapter.

A corner with a threaded axle for fixing the DVD drive in the laptop case is located next to its interface connector and secured with two screws. The adapter did not have a corner, but there were two threaded holes in the required location.

Therefore, I had to remove the corner from the DVD drive and, observing the orientation, secure it to the adapter using the unscrewed screws.

The decorative plastic panel installed on the purchased adapter (lower in the photo) differed in shape and size from the panel installed on the laptop DVD drive. Therefore, in order to avoid large gaps and the appearance of the laptop, I had to remove the panel from the DVD drive case and install it on the hard drive adapter case.

The photo shows a laptop with an adapter installed with the front panel installed by the manufacturer. As you can see, the appearance of the laptop is not pleasing to the eye.

Changing the panel is not a difficult task if you know where the latches are and how to release them. It is better to remove the panel from the adapter first, since it will no longer be needed and if the latches accidentally break, this will not lead to undesirable consequences.

In a DVD drive removed from a laptop, the pull-out tray for installing disks, on which the front panel is attached, is recessed, and it is impossible to reach the latches in this position. But to extend it, there is a small hole on the panel, into which it is enough to push a metal rod, such as a needle or a straightened paper clip, using a couple of centimeters of pressure.

The decorative front panel on the DVD drive pull-out tray is secured with two latches. One latch, shown in the photo, is located on the edge of the right side of the panel. To release the latch, just use the blade of a screwdriver to press it in the recess provided for this.

The second latch is located on the opposite side of the panel and is slightly removed from its end. It is released from entanglement in the same way.

The front panel is removed from the adapter in the same way. After removing it, you need to install the removed front panel from the DVD drive onto the adapter and you can install the hard drive.

After installing the hard drive, you need to secure it in the adapter by screwing in four screws that are already partially screwed into the adapter housing. The screws must be screwed in such a way that they do not protrude, otherwise it will be impossible to insert the adapter into the laptop compartment.

In this hard drive adapter model, to the left of SATA there is a switch for adapting hard drives from different manufacturers:

• A: for HP/Cony;
• B: for Dell/IBM;
• C: for Other Brand.

A Seagate hard drive was installed, which was not on the list, so at random the switch slider was set to position B.

The hard drive adapter is ready to replace the DVD drive, and now it's time to insert it into the laptop bay.

The adapter easily fit completely into the laptop compartment, and the front panel merged with the body, just like the front panel of the previously installed DVD drive. All that remains is to secure the adapter by tightening one screw on the bottom of the laptop and you can check the operation of the hard drive.

After installing the battery and turning on the computer, the Windows system recognized the adapter, installed the driver, and the partitions of the additional hard drive became available for work. When writing and reading from the second hard drive, the blue LED on the adapter panel blinked, and in sleep mode it was constantly on.

By installing a hard drive adapter into a laptop instead of a useless DVD drive, it became possible to store up to 1.1 TB of information. In addition, by placing Windows system files and storing frequently used information on the SSD, the acoustic noise that the hard drive used to emit has disappeared, making the laptop virtually silent.

It's no secret that today many laptop owners no longer use standard built-in DVD drives, since the popularity of optical disks is decreasing every year, and they are being replaced by compact and capacious USB drives. And so that the unnecessary drive does not take up space in the system, it can be replaced with an adapter for connecting an SSD or a regular 2.5-inch HDD drive.

Instructions for installing an SSD drive instead of a DVD drive in a laptop

Before disassembling the laptop itself, you need to buy the HDD-DRIVE Caddy SATA-SATA adapter necessary for this operation, which is shaped like a regular built-in laptop DVD drive and has a special niche with SATA connectors for connecting an additional internal drive. You can purchase this device at low prices on trading platforms such as Aliexpress, or in similar online stores.

You will also need a free 2.5-inch HDD drive to install in a free bay.

After you have purchased everything you need, you can proceed:

Turn off your laptop, close the screen, turn it upside down and disconnect the battery;

Using a suitable screwdriver, remove the protective plastic cover to expose the drive (the principle is similar for almost all laptop models and manufacturers).

Unscrew all the drive mounting screws, and then carefully remove it from the case. This is usually easily done through its side mounting hole;

For reference. In some laptop models, the DVD drive is secured with one screw located under the keyboard. With this design, there is no need to remove the lower part of the housing to dismantle it. It is enough to remove the fixation of several latches, lift the keyboard, unscrew the screw and remove the DVD drive in the direction of opening the tray.

Then you need to install a new SSD or HDD drive into the bay of the purchased adapter, and place the already assembled structure in the place of the previous drive. Don't forget to connect the power cable and screw back all the fixing screws;

Reassemble the back of the laptop in reverse order, install the battery and try turning on the system.

For reference. The installed disk may not be detected immediately. It may be necessary to format it through Disk Management Manager. To do this, go to the control panel, select “System and Security”, then click “Administration”, then “Computer Management”. The system will detect the new connected drive and by right-clicking on it, you can easily format it into the desired file system, as well as give it a name that will be displayed in Windows Explorer.

That's all, we hope the article was useful and was able to explain to you how to properly connect an SSD/HDD drive instead of a DVD drive in a laptop.