HOW TO BUY AND INSTALL AN SSD
Back up your entire PC
Installing an SSD isn’t particularly difficult, but it will involve opening your computer’s case, which may invalidate your warranty. It might also involve replacing the main drive in your computer. This is frequently the case if you’re upgrading a laptop, which is unlikely to have slots for both a hard drive and an SSD.
Desktop PCS are usually more flexible, and can often accommodate multiple drives simultaneously, allowing you to add an SSD while leaving your boot drive in situ. But before you go any further, make a complete backup of your PC. For simplicity, we’d actually recommend making two backups: one using the excellent program O&O Diskimage 17
(see box below for an exclusive reader discount on our Software Store), and another by dragging and dropping important documents and photos to a USB stick (see page 35 for instructions on saving emails this way).
When you’ve done that, if you’re replacing your existing hard drive, you’ll need to find your Windows installation CD. If your computer didn’t come with a CD (most don’t these days), it should instead have a recovery partition on the drive that you’re removing. If you’d had any problems with Windows, you could have booted into that recovery partition and re-installed the operating system from there.
If your computer has only one drive then that has to be the one it boots from. Removing it means you’ll no longer have access to that recovery partition, so you’ll need to create a Windows installation drive using a USB stick with a minimum 8GB capacity. This will be wiped during the setup process, so don’t use the stick to which you’ve just dragged and dropped your documents and photos, or you’ll end up writing over them.
Create a Windows installation drive
Now visit Microsoft’s ‘Download Windows 10’ page (www.snipca. com/40891 – we’ll come to Windows 11 in a moment). Scroll down to ‘Create Windows 10 installation media’ and click the blue ‘Download tool now’ button (see screenshot top of page 53). When the media-creation tool has finished downloading, launch it and, when asked if you want to allow it to make changes to your device, click Yes.
Click through the instructions and when asked ‘What do you want to do now?’, select ‘Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD or ISO file) for another PC’ (see screenshot above right), and click Next.
The program will examine your computer and select a recommended
configuration, which you can change by unticking the box beside ‘Use the recommended options for this PC’ (see screenshot below). If you want to leave them as they are (which we’d recommend unless you know for sure they’re wrong), just click Next. Leave ‘USB flash drive’ selected on the next screen, plug in your 8GB (or larger) USB stick, then click Next again.
Select the stick on the next screen. If it’s not shown, wait a few seconds in case Windows is still recognising it, then click ‘Refresh drive list’. Click ‘Next’, and the program will download the Windows installation files, write them to your USB stick, and set the drive to a state from which it can be used to boot your computer. When it has completed the process, click Finish. You can then remove the USB stick, but keep it somewhere safe for use when you’ve installed your SSD.
If your PC is running Windows
11, rather than Windows 10, you’ll need to download the Windows 11 media creation tool instead. Click ‘Download Now’ in the ‘Create Windows 11 Installation Media’ section at www. snipca.com/40892.
Choose the right SSD for your computer
If you’re replacing your hard drive, you’ll almost certainly need an SSD with a SATA interface. However, if you’re replacing an existing SSD, you could be looking at SATA, MSATA, M.2 or PCIE. These interfaces aren’t interchangeable, so it’s important you find out what you need.
A good place to start is the details you’ll have received when you bought your computer, as these should include a list of components. If you don’t have this, check the handbook or Windows’ Device Manager. For the latter, open the Start menu and type device, then click Device Manager. Click the arrow beside ‘Disk drives’, then look up your drive’s name or serial number online. Device Manager tells us that our laptop has an Intel SSDPEKNW512G8, which several sites reveal has a PCIE interface.
If that doesn’t work you could also try opening your computer and checking your existing drive, and any spare slots for second and third drives on the motherboard. Before doing so, make sure you earth yourself by touching a piece of metal, such as a radiator, that’s attached to the floor. Alternatively, wear an anti-static wrist strap, such as this £5.79 example from Amazon (www. snipca.com/40951). Either method should be enough to prevent built-up static from transferring from you to your computer.
As we mentioned earlier, if you’re replacing a laptop’s hard drive for an SSD, you’ll almost certainly find a SATA drive inside. These have a surface area similar to that of a playing card, and a shell that sits over one side of the connectors. Our pick of the best SATA SSDS is the
Crucial MX500 (pictured above), which is available at capacities ranging from 250GB (£44) to 4TB (£319), at www.snipca. com/37304. We think the 500GB unit, priced £52.79, represents the best value.
Less common are MSATA drives, roughly the size of a stack of business cards (such as the Kingston model pictured below). They use the same interface as SATA, but have more exposed connectors that plug directly into a socket on compatible motherboards. They were superseded by M.2 models in 2015, so you’ll find them only in laptops built in the two or three years before that.
More modern computers use M.2 SSDS, which look more like sticks of memory than older SATA units, and connect using a shorter copper interface at one end.
To confuse matters, M.2 SSDS come in
two varieties: either with the older SATA interface, or the new, faster NVME interface. It’s easy to mix them up, so check any wording on the drive itself. If it still isn’t clear, carefully remove and examine the existing drive. As you can see from the photo right, M.2 SATA SSDS have two notches in the copper interface, while NVME drives have only one.
NVME SSDS are faster because they use the more powerful PCIE interface, which can hit data-transfer speeds of 3,000MB/S – more than 20 times faster than SATA. However, they can reach these speeds only when copying multiple large files, or when you’re performing intensive tasks such as editing videos. NVME isn’t significantly faster when booting your PC or running most software.
Our favourite NVME model remains the
– we reviewed it in Issue 552, back in 2019, but it hasn’t been bettered since. You’ll pay £50 for a 250GB model, up to £184 for 2TB (www. snipca.com/31265). If you need an M.2 SSD, try the which starts at £40 for 120GB (www.snipca. com/40953).
The other thing to consider is which PCIE standard you need. PCIE 3 was finalised in 2010, updated as PCIE 3.1 in 2014, then superseded by PCIE 4 in 2019. As you’d imagine, PCIE 4 is more advanced, running at roughly twice the speed of PCIE 3 and 3.1 in like-for-like tasks.
Although PCIE 4 uses the same interface as its predecessors, and will work with your existing software, you will need a processor and motherboard that support PCIE 4 to feel the benefit. If you don’t, your new PCIE 4 SSD will be slowed down by the older interface to which it’s connected. So, if your PC only supports an earlier standard and you’re choosing between PCIE 3, 3.1 or 4 SSDS, you should pick whichever is the cheaper option, unless you’re planning on upgrading your PC in the near future and want to take your drive with you.
Our recommended PCIE 4 SSD is the
SN850, from Western Digital’s Wd_black range, which has read and write speeds up to 7000MB/S and 5300MB/S respectively. It’s available in 500GB (£85), 1TB (£130) and 2TB (£304) capacities from www.snipca.com/40958.
Install an SSD in a desktop PC
Shut down and disconnect your PC. Remove the case and identify the drive interface. There’s a better chance of the motherboard accommodating two or more drives on a desktop PC than there is on a laptop, so you may be able to install your new drive without removing your old one, or reinstalling Windows. Your first job is to locate the connectors on the motherboard.
If you’re fitting an M.2 or NVME drive, hold it at a 30-degree angle to the motherboard interface (as pictured above), making sure the notch or notches on its connectors are correctly aligned with those on the interface, then press in and push down. When it’s in position, use the screw hole on the motherboard to secure it.
If your PC doesn’t have M.2 slots, you’ll need to buy a 2.5in SATA drive. And if you don’t have 2.5in bays in your case, you’ll also need a cradle that will work with the 3.5in or 5.25in bays used for full-sized hard drives and optical drives – try this £5 model from Valuegist (www. snipca.com/36966, pictured above right).
First, secure the drive to the cradle using the screw holes in the underside of the drive chassis, then use the screw holes in the side of the cradle to secure it to the PC. Finally, use a SATA cable to hook up the connectors on the drive, and the interface on the motherboard.
Install an SSD in a laptop
Shut down your laptop and, if the battery can be removed from the outside, disconnect it. You now need to remove the case, which is more difficult than with a desktop PC. Some laptops, which have been designed with upgrades in mind, have components beneath the keyboard, like memory and drives, that can be lifted out after removing a couple of screws. Others have an access panel on the underside, but many require you to remove the bottom plate entirely.
We tried this with our main laptop and, even though we’d removed all the screws, it was still impossible to take off the plate, as it appeared to be fixed internally close to the Ethernet port, possibly with glue. If you have similar difficulties, don’t force it: call your manufacturer for advice.
It’s unlikely you’ll have a spare SSD slot, so you’ll almost certainly need to replace your existing SATA hard drive. The drive may be screwed into position, so check for and carefully remove any screws, then ease the cable off its connectors (avoid removing the end connected to the motherboard if possible).
Re-use the cable to connect the drive to the motherboard and use the screws you removed to fix it in place. When replacing the back cover, panel or keyboard, make sure all the external screws are replaced, and be careful not to over-tighten them so you don’t damage the heads.
If you’ve replaced the hard drive your computer boots from, you’ll need to reinstall Windows using the USB installation stick you created earlier. Put this in a USB port, then plug in and turn on your computer. As it starts up, watch out for any on-screen message about pressing a key to enter the BIOS or UEFI. Often, this will be F1, F2, F10, F12 or Del. If it’s not shown on the screen, check your manual.
When you enter the BIOS or UEFI, navigate through the various screens until you find a boot order or similar option (in our screenshot below it’s called ‘Boot Option Priorities’ ). These let you specify the order in which your PC searches various devices for an operating system when booting.
Move your USB stick into the first position – as shown in our screenshot, where we have highlighted Boot Option 1
, pressed Enter, and are now selecting the Sandisk USB stick on which we set up the Windows Installer. This will demote your new SSD into second place.
If you also have a boot device or startup option, you might not need to make any changes. Instead you can simply select your USB stick before letting the PC restart again.
Rather than booting into Windows, it will start the Windows installer. Work your way through the instructions to reinstall the operating system, then revert to your backups to restore your data.