supercharging a lowly laptop

[stuck]

It must have been sometime in 2014 that I bought a simple laptop for my mother. It came with Win 8 but I instantly updated it to Win 8.1. Not long after that I added an extra 2 GB RAM, a hand-me-down from adding more RAM to my son's laptop.

Today, I added more hand-me-downs for my son's now dead laptop (he dropped it and blew the motherboard), taking the RAM up to 8 GB and replacing the 320 GB HDD with a 256 GB SSD. The latter upgrade has had a massive impact on the responsiveness of the machine. Well worth the downgrade in storage capacity.

The upgrade process was simple:
Pop out the battery.
Undo a couple of screws to get at the RAM and HDD
Pop out the existing RAM, slide in the 'new' RAM
Hook up the HDD and the SSD to my main Desktop PC
Open the free version of Macrium Reflect and use the 'clone' option to clone the HDD to the SSD
Fit the SSD back into the laptop
Refit the battery

Job done!

Ken

[HansV]

[StuartR]

That's a reasonable life for a laptop. Good job!

[stuck]

That's a reasonable life for a laptop. Good job!

Yes, it will do until Win 8.1 reaches end-of-life in Jan 2023.

[JoeP]

See. You can find lots to take up all your spare time now.

[BobH]

Remember to pace yourself, Ken!

All those things on the list don't have to be done the first 5 or 6 years, you know!

[HansV]

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[stuck]

Remember to pace yourself, Ken!

All those things on the list don't have to be done the first 5 or 6 years, you know!

Noted, but this job was worth doing promptly as it means I now have something useable, portable (well, just about portable, it's not exactly the lightest laptop) and still receiving security patches that I can take with me when we go on holiday at the end of next week. The alternative was to splash cash on a (refurbished) Win 10 / 11 machine.

Ken

[PJ_in_FL]

Ken,

Just curious about the line "Hook up the HDD and the SSD to my main Desktop PC".

Did you need a special adapter for the hook-up?

[stuck]

..."Hook up the HDD and the SSD to my main Desktop PC".

What I meant was, I opened the case and plugged the two drives into the motherboard. A work of moments as the PSU in the case had spare power cables, the motherboard had spare SATA sockets and I had spare SATA cables.

Ken

[Jay Freedman]

PJ, if you don't have all the spare bits that Ken has, you can get an external drive enclosure for somewhere in the range of USD $10 to $25. I've been using one for about a year to house my backup drive, because I can easily disconnect it from the PC when it isn't being used (so backup files won't be vulnerable to ransomware).

There are various options, such as USB 3.0 vs. 3.1, powered through the USB cable or by separate wall wart, tool-free vs. screwdriver closure.

[LineLaline]

Nothing.jpg

Hahaha I like that one