laptop hard drive Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Will a laptop hard drive work in a desktop PC?

Posted on June 25, 2025

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Question from Marcel: I accidentally sat on my laptop and broke the screen and who knows what else inside (it doesn’t do anything when I turn it on).

I removed the 1TB hard drive from the damaged laptop and it appears to be ok. Well, at least it doesn’t appear to be bent or broken in any way.

Can I install this hard drive from the laptop in my desktop computer to give me an additional 1TB of storage?

[Read more…]

Q&A: What’s the easiest way to clone a hard drive to an SSD?

Posted on June 6, 2025

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Question from Samuel: Hi, Rick. I bought a 1TB solid state drive (SSD) to replace the aging 1GB drive in my laptop.

I read your post about using Clonezilla to clone the contents of the old drive onto the new one, but I know from one of your other posts that I’ll need to buy a SATA to USB adapter too. [Read more…]

How to replace the hard drive in a laptop

Posted on November 26, 2018

I have written several posts that discuss either replacing a bad laptop hard drive with a new one or upgrading the system with a larger drive or an SSD.

Last night I was answering a reader’s question about a hard drive upgrade when it occurred to me that I’ve never really explained how to physically swap out the drives.

Replacing the hard drive in most laptops is almost as easy as selling popcorn in a movie theater. Just follow the simple steps listed below: [Read more…]