[Stepwise] How to Do Laptop Storage Upgrade?

The necessities of laptop storage upgrade

A laptop has become an indispensable device in the modern world. It serves various purposes, from document creation and storing cherished media files to downloading fun programs. However, as these files accumulate over time, you may notice a decline in the laptop's responsiveness. Even simple tasks like writing or browsing websites can become challenging.

What’s worse, you may even receive a notice like “Low Disk Space” warning, which indicates potential risks. At this time, there are high possibilities of suffering degraded performance, system instability, saving difficulties and even data loss. To avoid these risks, it is advisable to do laptop upgrade. In the following part, we will share detailed steps for you.

3 options for upgrading laptop storage

Generally, there are 3 choices for upgrading laptop storage. Based on your demands, you can choose one that suits you most.

1. Upgrade internal laptop's storage: The most efficient solution is to upgrade to a larger HDD or SSD if you're running low on space. While you can attempt to free up space using Disk Cleanup or uninstalling programs, these methods may provide only temporary relief, as space continues to fill up over time.

2. Move data to an external hard drive: If you only use some files or programs occasionally, using an extra storage device to store them can’t be better. This could be something small like a USB drive, an external hard drive, or a Micro-SD card.

3. Try Cloud storage: Cloud storage lets you keep your files online for free up to a certain limit. After that, you might need to pay a small monthly fee. You can also sync a folder on your computer with cloud service, like Google Cloud, which means your files are both on your computer and online.

The best solution for getting more storage on laptop

As we discussed earlier, relying on temporary solutions is not a sustainable long-term strategy. If you want to avoid limitations on your internet connection, it's recommended to consider the first and second options for laptop storage upgrade.

Here we recommend to use a powerful computer management tool, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Its Clone Disk function supports both the 2 plans. If you want to upgrade to a larger disk, you can use it to move all the original data to the new one, including OS, and replace the hard drive to your laptop. Also, you can just transfer part of data to an external hard drive as backup.

Here we take upgrading a large disk as an example with this powerful tool.

Before you do:

 Plug the new hard drive into the computer using a USB port and verify that it is detected successfully.

 Verify that the hard disk has sufficient capacity to store all the data from the current hard drive. If it doesn't, you can proactively delete or remove any unnecessary programs or files from the original disk.

 Please check the partition table of both the old and new hard disks to determine whether they use MBR or GPT formats. If you find that the partition style of the new disk differs from the old one,, you can convert it to GPT or MBR beforehand. Or change boot mode (BIOS or UEFI) after after completing the cloning process.

Step 1. Launch the installed AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click "Clone" from the top pane and choose "Clone Disk".

Step 2. When you enter the Disk Clone Wizard, choose the disk copy method. Here we choose Clone Disk Quickly.

Two different cloning methods:
● Clone Disk Quickly: Only copy the used space of the disk to another disk, and you can clone large hard drive to smaller hard drive, and adjust partition size during the copy process.
● Sector-by-Sector Clone: Copy all sectors of the disk to a target disk no matter it is used or not. It will make exactly the same disk as the source disk.

Step 3. Select the system disk as the source disk. Click Next to move on.

Step 4. Select the new HDD or SSD as the target disk. Click Next. The operation will delete all data on the target hard drive, so if there is any important data on the disk, click No and backup disk beforehand. If not, click Yes to continue.

* If the target disk is an SSD, you’d better check the option of “Optimize the performance of SSD”.

Step 5. Here you can edit the partition size on the target disk according to your needs. Or you can repartition hard drive with AOMEI Partition Assistant after coping. Click Next.

Step 6. It will give you a Note about how to boot computer after clone or migration. Read it and click Finish.

Step 7. Finally, click Apply at the toolbar and click Proceed to execute the task.

After cloning everything from the old hard drive to the new one, you can shut down the computer and install the new disk for replacement.

For desktop, it is easy to install a second hard drive because it is usually equipped with more than one hard drive bay. After installation, you need to enter BIOS to change boot priority, and move the cloned hard disk on the top one of the boot order.

But if you are replacing hard drive in Windows 10/11 laptop, things might become different as some laptop only one hard drive bay. In this case, you need to: Turn off your PC. Open the case, remove the old disk and put in the new hard drive, attach the cables and secure the drive with screws. Clone the case, turn on the power and it will boot from the cloned hard drive.

This is the whole process of Windows 10 replace hard drive with AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

To sum up

From the shared 3 laptop storage upgrade methods, you can choose any one of them according to your needs. With the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant, you can better manage the device. If you do not want to upgrade a new disk, it also provides solutions like PC Cleaner and Merge Partitions.

Apart from storage management, you can still rely on it to fix computer issues like rebuilding corrupted MBR, converting system disk between MBR/GPT, or creating a Windows To Go USB. Windows Server users can choose its Server Edition to enjoy convenience.