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My laptop only has one slot and I want to upgrade to an SSD. I'm thinking of cloning while my hard drive is in an external case and the SSD placed in the slot.
JUN
Posted 2019-01-07T02:56:16.383
Reputation: 11
Can I take my hard drive, put it in an external case and run the pc from the external hard drive?
Answers
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Only if your operating system supports it. Windows does not--it will reach a point where it no longer can use the BIOS to access the drive but hasn't loaded the USB drivers needed to talk to the drive.
If you hack it sufficiently to overcome this (it's a problem with the order in which things are done, not an utter impossibility) it will run, albeit slowly. I have no idea which version(s) can thus be hacked, only that there is at least one that can. (I do not believe any 9x version had adequate USB support, I read this before 10 came out.)
I do not know about other operating systems.
Loren Pechtel
Posted 2019-01-07T02:56:16.383
Reputation: 2 234
As kindly noted by Loren Pechtel above, Microsoft has disabled that ability, though it works well with Linux. Instead, 1) do the cloning while the HDD is still in your laptop. 2) Remove the HDD, install the SSD 3) Boot from the SSD and 4) Close the patent and send it to the recovery ward,,, err, test it thoroughly. – K7AAY – 2019-01-07T19:27:02.580
yes. But it'll be a lot slower. Use the internal SSD to boot instead – phuclv – 2019-01-07T02:57:50.797
Exactly what I am trying to do. That's why i need to clone the HDD from the external case. Just wondering if it's just possible at all. – JUN – 2019-01-07T03:07:25.860