Upgrading a hard drive

[lumeer]

I have a 256 GB SSD in my laptop and am almost out of disk space. I need to upgrade to a larger SSD.

I would prefer to do this myself as I have bad experiences of having other people poke around inside my electronic gadgets.

So I guess that I would have to start by buying a larger SSD online.

But then, how can I transfer the contents of my existing SSD to the new SSD in such a way that the new SSD is fully bootable and works as though all the files had always been on it?

Presumably it is not as simple as just copying the files to an external hard drive and then copying those to the new SSD.

My laptop has space for only one SSD; it is an ultrabook.

Any advice will be appreciated.

 

[WAslayer]

You clone the existing drive to the new one.. gparted, acronis and a few others applications can help with that..

 

[lumeer]

You clone the existing drive to the new one.. gparted, acronis and a few others applications can help with that..

Thank you. How would I have the two drives communicate with each other? My laptop has space for only one SSD. Is there an external adapter that can be bought for this purpose?

 

[SauRoNZA]

Thank you. How would I have the two drives communicate with each other? My laptop has space for only one SSD. Is there an external adapter that can be bought for this purpose?

Yup USB external housing is your best bet.

Then you can effectively make the old drive an external.

 

[SHL]

Thank you. How would I have the two drives communicate with each other? My laptop has space for only one SSD. Is there an external adapter that can be bought for this purpose?

SATA to USB adapter/cable

 

[Willie Trombone]

SATA to USB adapter/cable

This will work too - effectively what an external housing is.

 

[Exaelea]

Well since its an ultrabook, there's a chance that its a nvme m.2 or sata m.2 so would need to buy a usb adapter that supports the correct type. Also would need to buy the correct type of bigger SSD, could also be a normal 2.5" sata ssd... making it a rather thick-ish/old school ultrabook.

First step, google your model number and figure out what it has.

 

[lumeer]

Thank you, everybody.

 

[Pandarye]

Being an Ultrabook I assume your laptop doesn't have a DVD drive? If it does you could add a second drive for storage if you don't need the DVD drive.

 

[Mystic Twilight]

Use macrium reflect software for the cloning, there are instructions online as well explaining how to do the actual cloning.