So I am wanting to upgrade my Hard drive to a solid state drive so that I can upgrade to full Photoshop. Has anybody done this? I am more nervous than anything. I used to upgrade my desktops by myself all the time, but this seems like another animal! Lol!! I have everything picked out and done a lot of research and found videos for installing my laptop. But sort of looking for someone who has done it and can give any pointers on cloning and that kind of thing. Anybody this crazy??
I've done this with a desktop - installed a SSD with the intent of having only my OS on the SSD. The installation/cloning wasn't without a few hiccups but nothing that some Google troubleshooting couldn't handle. Two issues I ran into: 1. PS doesn't like being on a non "C" drive so I had to still install any Adobe software on the SSD, not on one of my other internal HD's (not sure if there is a work around for that or not, but I wasn't able to figure it out - although since you are doing a laptop this doesn't seem like it will be an issue) and 2. If you run a backup program like Backblaze, you may have to do some additional configurations to transfer the back up and ensure it's running properly. Backblaze specifically has an "Inherit" process that is meant for this kind of transition. Good luck - I wish you an issue-free transition!!!
Thanks so much @busywoman139 I appreciate the response! My thought is that I would do OS and my memory hog programs, leaving the office kind of programs on my other hard drive, along with photos and my documents. I am backing up to Crash Plan right now and will need to migrate to Backblaze in a few months when my Crash Plan stops. So many things to think about! lol!
I haven't, my brother built my computer. I do have a solid state that is running the OS, and a few other programs. Everything else runs off my other drive. The quirks to me are making sure that those other programs install on the right drive. Most of them want to install on C, so I have to override that. Which is obnoxious. And then some like Steam are installed on E, and you have to manually change where the library is stored! Because it was storing save games and such on C. Argh!
My husband did ours under the instruction of a geeky colleague. Before you start, is the laptop still inside it's warranty? If it is, opening it up yourself to change the hard drive could invalidate that warranty, you'd need a professional to do it for you. If it's outside warranty then go for it. I have something that turns old hard drives into external drives, that enabled us to copy stuff from my old drive if I found I needed a particular file/folder that didn't make it into the back up. Some backup software doesn't back up "hidden files". I've noticed that I lost some filters in my software, so I'm going to have to dig the old disk out again soon.
I did mine about a year ago and it seems like it went pretty smoothly. I actually had an SSD and upgraded to a bigger SSD because I wanted all my programs installed on the SSD and I was running out of space. The actual HD installation was super easy, the part I had problems with was reinstalling Windows 7 because the first time I entered the wrong serial number and had to start over. Lol. That was my user error. Everything else went smoothly. Good luck!
I replaced my hard drive with a Samsung SSD that came with a CD that made an exact copy of my hard drive onto the new SSD drive, so that all I had to do was copy and swap. It was really that simple. (I only have one hard drive in my laptop; it is a seven year old computer, so I also gained a ton of hard drive space compared to what I had before!) I still have my old hard drive, and an enclosure so that I can use it externally, but I have not gone back to it since upgrading. My new desktop has both an SSD drive and a regular hard drive; I install all of my applications onto the SSD drive and I save all of my non-application files onto the hard drive. I had one cloud service that wouldn't let me do that (I cancelled them) but for the most part, applications aren't too fussy about where you save the files you create. I don't have any back up programs running, although that is somewhere on my Important Things To Do Soon list.
You guys are so awesome!!! Thank you so much! Everybody had a little tidbit of info to help. I am starting to feel better about all this! Thank you so much!!! I warn you, I may send a PM as I get closer to installing. lol!! My computer has been around for quite a while, looks like about 4-1/2 years. It was one of the first wave that came with Windows 8, so been out of warranty for a long time. Thanks for having me think about that.
Can you send me some links of things you looked at to consider this? I really would like to do something (not just buy a new laptop) but don't even know where to start.
Depending on your computer (PC or Apple) memory is super easy to install! I've done that on 3 or 4 different PC laptops. The biggest thing is knowing the specs and the max your computer can handle.
My hubby installed my SSD. From what I remember it was pretty smooth and easy...but I just handed my computer over to him.
Women can do anything!!! While I didn't change my hard drive, I've installed more memory on two of my iMacs one time. The only thing I've needed help with was shoving the memory stick into the slot. My old thumbs aren't as strong as they once were so dh had to do the shoving! YouTube shows all sorts of videos on this sort of thing.
