sandisk-ssd-image-of-a-solid-state-disk-drive
April 29, 2019 In Hardware/Equipment By Daniel

Fix old PC / MAC – Install SSD

The Issue

Is your computer making loud noises and taking forever to boot up.  Are you experiencing long load times etc. This could be due to a faulty or worn out hard drive.  The good news is there is a great low cost way to breathe a little bit of life back into your old machine and speed things up.

I had a pc for around three years and it was doing everything I wanted it to.  I worked and played on this machine alot.  As time went on it became slower to boot up and retrieving files to open in programs such as word or excel took longer than usual.  All of this was decreasing my efficiency and tasks that should take 5 mins were taking 10 or 15 mins.  I did not want to outlay a bunch of money for a new PC but it was getting unbearable.

 

The Solution

I noticed how fast my work computer was and besides the fact that it had an i7 processor it also had an SSD. I was talking to a work colleague about this and he told me his brother had installed an SSD in his old machine and it made a big difference.  Around the same time my sister and her husband came down for christmas and he said SSD did wonders for his old macbook pro.   So for around $200 at the time I decided to give it a try.

So for my shopping list I needed:

 

 

You may also require a small phillips head screwdriver to remove your PC case cover and screw mounting screws.

I had a few spare sata connections in my PC so did not need to buy extras.  Watch the video below for the specific process.

One bit of trouble I ran into was the new disk not powering up, this was due to power and SATA connections being required.  I did not have an extra power connector so I stole the one from the DVD drive as I never used it anyway.

 

The Result

Wow 48 seconds bootup on stopwatch including typing login. This was taking 5 minutes with the worn out HDD.  I continued using the old HDD as extra storage but made backups of everything important aswell.

Instructional Video

 

Other tools:

Disk imaging / Cloning software

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

 

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Daniel

I am a web / software developer and I enjoy writing and talking about all things tech and a lot of things non tech including music, golf, motorcycles, video games. I try and keep up with all the latest news and movements in the web space and content marketing. Share your stories with me.