Netbook hdd upgrade to ssd

yorica

Hi

I have a Toshiba Netbook NB300 and so it has no CD drive.

The laptop has been very sluggish for a year or so and so I've invested in a replacement Samsung EVO 250gb ssd to hopefully improve it, in the vain hope that my wife won't persuade me into buying a new laptop that I can't afford.

After backing up everything and creating an image/clone with the various free software available and storing it on my NAS, I swapped over the drives but then realised that the computer wasn't able to function (black MS-DOS screen), as there was no way to get the image/clone back over to the new ssd from the nas.

Do I need to buy a SATA/USB cable to transfer the settings/windows from the netbook to the ssd or is there another (easy) way to do it without having to spend even more money.

My next step is to then upgrade to windows 10.

Any advice is appreciated

Frank

safsnowball

yorica wrote: »

Hi


Do I need to buy a SATA/USB cable to transfer the settings/windows from the netbook to the ssd or is there another (easy) way to do it without having to spend even more money.


Frank

That's the way, use the software to image to your SSD, swop it over and Bob's your uncle. Cables are a couple of quid off eBay.

NiftyDigits

I would always run a clean install to an SSD, then to replace data manually. Why transfer unnecessary crud?

yorica

NiftyDigits wrote: »

I would always run a clean install to an SSD, then to replace data manually. Why transfer unnecessary crud?

A clean install would be preferable. Can you please advise me on how I'd do that? Wouldn't I need to buy a large capacity usb to boot from?

Cycrow

You could use a usb, wouldn't have to be all that big though, 8GB would most likely be plenty. You can download the OS ISO and either put it on a bootable usb, or to CD/DVD (and use an external drive to boot from).

enfield_freddy

plan "b" might be to go here , https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 and first upgrade your old machine to win 10 , then return to that page and "burn" the image to a usb stick , change your drive over then do a clean install from the usb stick.


rather than saving your drive as an image , you might be better just saving your doccy,s and photos etc and copying them back

NiftyDigits

yorica wrote: »

A clean install would be preferable. Can you please advise me on how I'd do that? Wouldn't I need to buy a large capacity usb to boot from?

I sent you a PM regarding this some hours ago.

No need to rush in to Windows 10.

Might be worth upgrading RAM too. Should cost around £6 for a 2GB module, dependent on whether DDR2 OR DDR3.

almillar

That's the way, use the software to image to your SSD, swop it over and Bob's your uncle. Cables are a couple of quid off eBay.

Absolutely not! Please don't simply image an HDD over to an SSD. You want to install Windows fresh onto an SSD, when it will be recognised (7 and onwards?) as one, and treated differently to an HDD - load levelling to even out 'wear' on the SSD and avoid bad sectors.
You can check and change this manually in Windows, but installing fresh is just a good idea instead of copying over crud you don't want.

yorica

I downloaded Win 10 to a usb last night and then installed the ssd and started the installation process, however once it gets to roughly 75% a message appears saying to reboot. Once re-booted it asks the same questions about language, etc and then it gets to 75% again and reboots again. I've done this roughly 10 times now and I can't get beyond the 75% mark.

BTW - I haven't inputted a product key, I just pressed skip, as the details on the windows sticker on the bottom of my laptop have worn away.

What is going wrong?

Diefer

Try removing the USB stick at the reboot point, as it is probably using the USB to boot when it should be using the hard disk.

Just as an aside, I did the same thing to my Netbook just over a year ago - put an SSD in to replace the HDD. As you will soon find out, it made a massive difference to the performance. However, as NIftyDigits said, it's also worth upgrading the RAM as well if you haven't already. It's a very cheap performance upgrade.

enfield_freddy

yorica wrote: »

I downloaded Win 10 to a usb last night and then installed the ssd and started the installation process, however once it gets to roughly 75% a message appears saying to reboot. Once re-booted it asks the same questions about language, etc and then it gets to 75% again and reboots again. I've done this roughly 10 times now and I can't get beyond the 75% mark.

BTW - I haven't inputted a product key, I just pressed skip, as the details on the windows sticker on the bottom of my laptop have worn away.

What is going wrong?

did you actually upgrade your original system to win 10?


win 10 registers your machine , and as such you cannot just fit a new drive and do a clean install , as it will be unregistered.




load win 7/8 , then go to the update page I pointed to above , upgrade to win 10 THEN do a clean install