[Step-by-Step Guidance] Easily Do HP Laptop Hard Drive Replacement

Is it worth replacing hard drive in HP laptop?

Over time, your HP laptop may get slow and sluggish. Should I just do a thorough clean or upgrade laptop hard drive for my HP? It is worth considering. If you are being ambivalent, these factors can offer guidance:

3 factors for deciding whether to upgrade laptop hard drive:

Performance: If your laptop's performance has been markedly sluggish and you're currently using a traditional HDD/old SSD, upgrading to a more advanced one like M.2 NVMe SSD can make a significant difference.

Storage: If your current hard drive cannot share more room for new data and files, a larger hard drive replacement for HP laptop might be a priority.

Hard drive health: If you start noticing signs of hard drive failure, it's a clear signal that it's time to do HP laptop hard drive replacement.

By taking these factors into account, you can make a well-informed decision about whether replacing the hard drive for an HP laptop is the right choice. If any of these scenarios align with the current situation, don’t hesitate. Take the step to upgrade your hard drive for your device's health.

What to do before do HP laptop hard drive replacement

To do a successful HP laptop hard drive replacement, it is necessary to make some preparations.

▌Suitable new drive: Carefully select a new drive. Based on the factors outlined above, you need to consider your specific needs, whether it's improved performance, more storage space, or a balance of both. And, ensure the selected drive can be compatible with your laptop's specifications.

▌SATA to USB connector: If your laptop has only one drive bay, you'll need to connect the new drive to a USB port using a SATA to USB cable or an SSD enclosure.

▌Screwdriver: To physically replace the hard drive in your HP laptop, you may require a screwdriver that matches the size of the screws.

▌Effective data cloning tool: If you're transferring data from the old hard drive to the new hard drive, reliable disk cloning software can be necessary. This is especially important if you want to avoid reinstalling the Windows OS and programs from scratch.

Considering that, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is an ideal choice. Using this powerful tool can not only allow you to avoid reinstalling anything, but it can also save you time and energy for its high data transfer speed and user-friendly design. What’s more, after cloning the disk, you can also rely on it for your daily computer management.

Now, follow the clear guidance to see how this tool brings convenience and efficiency when do hard drive replacement for HP laptop.

How to replace hard drive for an HP laptop

Replacing hard drive for an HP laptop will be divided into 3 part. Follow the step-by-step guidance, you can easily finish the process.

Part 1. Before cloning

1. First, please remove unnecessary files or programs from your current hard disk. This will help shrink its size to fit the SSD drive.

2. Then Connect the SSD to your laptop and ensure that it gets recognized properly. You might require an external USB to SATA adapter, dock, or enclosure to do this.

3. Remember to back up important files you want to keep on the SSD drive. This step is crucial as all data will be wiped during the cloning process.

4. If you're considering cloning an MBR system HDD to a GPT SSD drive, make sure your motherboard supports UEFI boot mode. This is important because you'll need to upgrade the BIOS legacy to UEFI boot mode for successful cloning. Failing to do so might result in being unable to boot from the destination disk.

Part 2. Start cloning

After confirming the above steps are successfully done, let’s start do HP laptop hard drive replacement with AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Step 1. Run the installed AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click “Clone” in the top menu, and select "Clone Disk" feature.

Step 2. Then choose the clone method to copy the selected disk and hit the “Next” button. If you are cloning a large hard disk to a smaller one, choose the first option, please.

Step 3. Select a destination disk to contain all data from the source disk, and click “Next”.

If the destination disk is an SSD drive, you can click the “Optimize the performance of SSD” option during the process, which can help make 4K alignment on SSD partitions.

Step 4. You can adjust partition size in this window if you choose “Clone Disk Quickly” above. After everything is done, hit on “Next” to continue.

1. Clone without resizing partitions: All partitions will be cloned to the target disk as the original partition size. It is available when the target disk is large enough to hold all partitions on the source disk.
2. Fit partitions to the entire disk: All partitions will be cloned to the target disk and take up its full capacity according to the original partition size proportion.
3. Edit partitions on this disk: You can change every partition size on the target disk as you need.

Step 5. A note will appear to tell you how to boot from the cloned disk. You can read it carefully, and then click “Finish”.

Step 6. Click “Apply” to commit the pending operation.

In case of "cloned SSD won’t boot", kindly please follow the steps if you are cloning the system hard drive to another.

Step 1. Restart your computer, long press the "F2" key (perhaps other keys like DEL), and access the BIOS environment.

Step 2. Change the boot order and set the cloned hard drive as the first boot drive in BIOS.

Step 3. Press "Enter". Now you should boot the computer from the cloned hard disk successfully.

Note: If you want to clone only the C drive or boot-related partitions to another hard drive, its “Migrate OS to SSD" feature can be helpful. It only transfers the OS partition to another hard drive and allows you to boot from it smoothly.

Part 3. Securely boot from cloned new hard drive

Once the cloning process is complete, it's important to boot up from the newly cloned destination disk.

Step 1. Power down your laptop and disconnect the SSD drive, power cable, and any other connected cables.

Step 2. Open the back cover of your laptop. Remove the old hard drive from its slot and install the cloned SSD drive. Secure it in place using a screwdriver.

Step 3. Attach the back panel that covers the drive and screw it back on. Then restart your laptop. During the initial startup screen, press and hold specific keys to access the BIOS environment. Or you can directly click “Tools” > “UEFI BIOS Boot Options Manager” to directly access to BIOS.

Step 4. Navigate to the Boot tab in the BIOS menu. Check the boot list and use the arrow keys to move the cloned SSD to the top of the boot priority list.

Step 5. Save the changes you've made in the BIOS setup utility and exit. Your laptop will now successfully boot from the newly cloned solid-state drive.

Final words

When you decide to do HP laptop hard drive replacement, AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you save much energy and time. As you can see, this powerful software can solve many other computer issues as well.

To improve computer performance, you can try its “Migrate OS to SSD”, “4K Alignment”, or “Disk Speed Test”. To increase drive space storage, the functions like “App Mover”, “Allocate Free Space”, and “Merge partitions” can be helpful. If you want to enjoy these advanced features on Windows Server devices, you can try the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.