"We've come so far, so quickly..."

[Anonymouse]

Ahem. Spot the original Galactica fan, back when Starbuck was still a bloke (not that I didn't like Katee Sackhoff, she was superb!). To explain:

I've just replaced my laptop's hard drive with a Samsung SSD, because a S.M.A.R.T. scan via CrystalDiskInfo indicated possible imminent hard drive failure; there are various things you can spot, such as SMART 5 (Reallocated Sectors Count). Ideally this should be 0; if it isn't, and if you notice the number creeping upward over time, your drive is dying.

This is nowhere near the problem it used to be (eee, when I were a lad and 5 1/4" floppies were still the in thing...), of course. In the old days this task would've been a major undertaking, involving obscure DOS commands and a lot, a lot lot, of fiddling with hardware. There has been a great deal of improvement in the last few decades. Hence the thread title.

Today, the process is:

1) Find and obtain a suitable SSD, plus a USB lead - simplicity in itself.

2) Find and download cloning software - you pays your money & takes your choice. Freeware: there are some good ones. Buyware such as Acronis TrueImage: you get upgrades and support, plus it's a well-known brand name and justifiably so. I weighed the pros and cons, and went with Acronis.

3) Connect and initialise your SSD. This was where things took something of a left turn, though I'm still not sure a) where I went wrong, or b) how I managed to correct it. But at first Windows couldn't see the thing, though Disk Management could. I think, though I'm not sure, I initialised it in the wrong mode for my system, but after several attempts and research I managed to get it to behave via the Command Prompt and DISKPART.

Even in these days of graphical and touchscreen interfaces, a CLI is still useful sometimes.

4) Clone your existing hard drive to the SSD - utter doddle with the right software, none of that old XCOPY nonsense with the multiple switches and parameters.

5) Close laptop down;
Take a deeeeeeeeep breath;
Undo the screws holding the laptop's bottom plate on and remove said plate;
Locate and very carefully remove the hard drive (as an anti-static precaution, touch a radiator before you open up your laptop. STATIC IS THE ENEMY);
Another deep breath (optional );
Plug in your SSD;
Replace the bottom plate (you may or may not choose to replace the screws at this stage in case the worst happens and the laptop fails to boot, though this is unlikely if your cloning software reported no errors);
Cross fingers;
Press power button.

This event was followed by a huge sigh of relief (and, of course, replacing the screws!) as the laptop booted up with no fuss whatsoever (Windows didn't say a word because, I gathered from PC Advisor when I emailed them about this, when they build PCs the Windows activation code is injected into the motherboard), as if nothing had happened at all.

Except that for some peculiar reason, the sound was no longer working.

This, however, proved to be a very short battle between me and the Registry, lasting precisely one shot. Device Manager told me the high definition sound controller was disabled (Code 32); a brief bit of research and I found the correct registry key to modify. Apparently this is a known, if peculiar, issue.

A quick reboot, and all was and is well!