Increasing Storage on a Laptop, Keeping Family Memories Safe
As we snap away with our cameras and smartphones, it's easy to accumulate a treasure trove of family photos, but have you ever thought about what would happen if those cherished memories were lost forever? In today's digital age, it's crucial to keep your valuable files safe and secure. It’s also easy to run out of room on your computer. That's why we'll be sharing some tips on how to migrate your precious photo collection to a larger laptop ssd drive – because who wants their old hard drive or solid state drive running out of room?
We will walk you through 4 easy steps to increase your computer’s storage.
Increasing Storage on Your Laptop Step 1: Do you need a laptop ssd replacement?
If you're reading this, chances are you've reached the maximum capacity on your old laptop ssd drive. You might be experiencing slow performance, or worse, seeing "Not Enough Space" error messages when trying to save new photos. It's time to upgrade! Let's follow the steps to perform a laptop ssd replacement safely.
Before we go any further though let's make a: Backup!!!
Substep 1: SNAAACCKKSS!!
Seriously this might take awhile so why not grab yourself some delicious snacks to pass the time, or a lovely coffee. Trust me, you'll thank me later!
- Kicking Horse Coffee - Grizzly Claw Blend
- Three Farmers – Variety Snack Pack | Roasted Fava Beans (10), Chickpeas (10) & Lentils (10)
- Frankies Organic Chips Crunchy Sprouted (White Cheddar)
Increasing Storage on your Laptop Step 2: Why should I backup my files?
Before we dive into the process of upgrading to a larger SSD, let's talk about why backing up your files is so crucial. According to a study by the BackBlaze in 2023 (1):
“When looking at the data loss statistics of Americans who own a computer: 70% report accidentally deleting something. 54% report having lost data.”
As a starting point we recommend backing up your current photos to an external drive before increasing your computer storage.
As a general rule-of-thumb you want to back up all of your data with a "file" backup as well as an "image" of what your drive looks like before performing a drive clone. That way if anything goes wrong in the process you haven't lost anything and you have multiple chances either through the image or file backup of restoring your data.
Keep in mind the following principle:
3-2-1 Backups
In order to keep our data safe always have multiple copies stored in multiple locations.
3: copies of your data
2: different storage methods (there's really only 4: hard drives, SSD's, tape drives [yes still a thing], and cloud storage [just another hard drive somewhere else you rent basically]
1: copy of your data located off-site
As a practical example this could look like: photos storage on your laptop ssd drive, 1 copy of all of your photos on an external hard drive (backed up regularly), and cloud storage in case of a catastrophic loss of both your laptop ssd drive and external hard drive from an event like fire, flood, or theft. In lieu of cloud storage a great idea is to have two external hard drives and keep one at a trusted friend’s house, just make sure to keep that offsite copy up to date as well. (Bring along your laptop for brunch and plug it in while you eat to let it back itself up)
For most people this seems like a bit of a stretch, but we have dealt with plenty of cases where our clients either had no backups at all of their critical data, or they only had onsite storage and so they were vulnerable if they lost that site.
The last and often overlooked step of any good backup strategy is arguably the most important: always test your backups! We don't have to delete anything for this to work, just pretend you did, don't worry we won't tell. Do this by going into your backup software and trying to restore some photos from your last camping trip or outing with friends and make sure they are all present and you can open them.
An untested and unverified backup strategy is of little use, maybe it works, and maybe it doesn't who really knows. Do you want to find that out when you are trying to restore those memories from the beach last summer or have confidence that your data is safe?
Increasing Storage on your Laptop Step 3: How to I choose the right laptop ssd drive?
What is an Solid State Drive (SSD)? An SSD is a collection of small digital storage chips and a storage controller to direct the incoming traffic. Compared to a hard drive it is akin to accessing information from a library with a team of fast robots running through the aisles, rather than a single old librarian limping through them slowly.
When selecting a larger SSD, consider the following factors:
- Capacity: How much storage do you need? A general rule of thumb is to double your current storage capacity.
- Interface: Make sure the SSD has the same interface as your old drive (e.g., SATA III or PCIe) or matches an interface available to your system. NVMe drives are the gold standard these days, combining speed, capacity, and low power usage, but require an open M.2 PCIe interface. You can find this information out by …
- Speed: Look for an SSD with a high sequential read/write speed, such as NVMe. NVMe is??
For our example, if you have a 512GB hard drive and want to upgrade to a larger SSD, consider choosing one with at least 1TB of storage, we usually recommend 2TB for storing photos as 1TB isn't that much anymore.
For SATA interfaces:
- Crucial BX500 2TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD is a great option, offering speeds of up to 540 MB/s:
For NVMe interfaces:
- A budget friendly option is Crucial P3 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, PCIe Gen 4x4 and up to 5000MB/s reads, up to 440TB Total Bytes Written, read/write 680K/850K IOPS
- A high end option is SABRENT 2TB PCIe Gen4 - Up to 7,100 MB/s Rocket SSD, NVMe 4.0 M.2, PCIe Gen 4x4 up to 7100MB/s reads and up to 1,400TB Total Bytes Written comes with free Sabrent Acronis True Image for Sabrent Software for easy Cloning
Increasing Storage on your Laptop Step 4: How to I clone my laptop SSD drive?
Rather than reinstalling your operating system, all of your programs, then transferring all of your photos and data to the new SSD we can combine the process all into one simple step by cloning. Don't worry we won't be doing any shady experiments in some subterranean laboratory! Modern drive cloning software is accessible and easy to use with no ethical consequences to speak of.
Onward and upward!
Now that we've got your backup strategies implemented, verified your backups, and have your upgraded SSD Drive. Let's clone your old drive. This process creates an exact duplicate of your old hard drive or SSD onto the newer and hopefully larger SSD. There are a few software packages to do this: (most of these offer free trials perfect for a single use)
Here's the step-by-step process to clone your old drive:
1. Back up your current hard drive (good practice is to do both a file backup and an image backup).
2. Once the backup is complete, verify the integrity of the backup (untested backups are almost as bad as not having a backup in the first place).
3. Install the new drive into your computer alongside the original drive, if your computer only doesn't have enough available interfaces you can use either an external dock, ssd adapter, or a different computer to perform the cloning operation. Note that if you are using a dock or ssd adapter, whichever drive you intend to boot from must be connected directly to the computer, not through the dock!
Here are some ssd adapter options
- UGREEN M.2 NVMe Enclosure, USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps
- UGREEN Hard Drive Enclosure USB C 3.1 Gen 2 Type C to 2.5 inch SATA SSD
4. Then, clone the drive (note that cloning the drive does migrate all of your users' files so it's not necessary to transfer any files before or after the cloning process).
5. Install the new larger drive into the place where the original drive was and boot up your computer. Set the original drive aside in a safe place and keep it for a few months in order to make sure you didn't loose any data in the process. *Bonus tip, if you bought an ssd adapter to use in step 3, put your old laptop ssd drive into the adapter and remove all of the files, now you have a super fast and portable drive to transfer or back up some of your files to.*
6. Continue to the next section below:
Trust but verify
Sensing a theme here? Now that you've successfully cloned your photos, operating system and other data to a newer larger SSD do several spot checks to ensure your photos are all present and any critical documents are there. If anything is missing you have your backups as well as the original drive to help you rescue your data!
Wrapping up
In conclusion, upgrading to a larger SSD is a great way to have room to store even more precious memories. Now that you've followed along you have:
1. Selected the right drive for your computer
2. Created and tested your backup strategy
3. Cloned your old drive to your new one
Now you can sit back, relax and take more photos. Pour yourself a cup of your favorite beverage and smile, you did it!!
References:
- https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2023-state-of-the-backup-as-data-needs-grow-backups-need-to-fill-the-gaps/
- Macrium Reflect
- Acronis True Image
- EaseUS Todo Backup
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