My Lenovo Thinkpad laptop is almost 4 years old. It still functions well but the original Samsung 256GB M.2 SSD hard drive installed in the laptop is almost full, requiring me to keep a lot of files I need in cloud storage.
I have two options, buy a new laptop at substantial cost or upgrade the SSD storage drive from 256GB to 1TB for much less money.
I opted for the upgrade option. Even if it only gets me another year of laptop life the upgrade is worth it because if this laptop dies I can take the 1TB drive out and use it in the external USB enclosure as a fast small external backup drive.
Firstly I asked a contact at major SSD manufacturer Western Digital (WD), if I got a WD Blue SN580 NVMe SSD does it come with included software to clone my existing 256GB SSD to the new one, expand the system partition to keep existing Windows 10 install happy and then be able to slot in the new SSD into the old laptop?
Also to increase the chance of this working smoothly does WD suggest any particular external USB-C enclosure to put the new SSD in during the cloning process from old SSD to new SSD?
A WD spokesperson replied:
“Users can migrate their data to the WD Blue SN580 NVMe SSD with the downloadable Acronis True Image for Western Digital data migration software“.
“This software can Back up operating systems, applications, settings, and individual files on Windows and macOS, Recover files and folders, Clone internal drives”
“While we do not have any specific recommendations for external USB-C enclosures, we recommend the following specifications: The enclosure should be able to support M.2 2280 NVMe SSD with PCIe Gen 4.0 and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 for speeds of up to 10 Gbps”.
Armed with this advice I got a UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Adapter from Amazon and a Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN580 NVMe SSD as well.
I trust UGREEN as I have previously purchased several of their USB accessories and cables.
I am happy to rely on WD because I have purchased several of their drives over the years.
In fact I have still have an example shown below of a really old WD drive (from the last desktop PC I owned) with the tiny thin new WD SSD sitting on top.
After unboxing and unpacking the UGREEN SSD enclosure and WD SSD drive, I slotted the SSD into the enclosure, applied the thermal pad, put the enclosure case on as well as the rubber protector and plugged into the laptop via the included UGREEN USB-C to USB-C cable.
UGREEN cleverly uses a little rotating piece of rubber to hold the SSD in place, rather than a screw.
Next I created a 1TB partition and quick formatted the WD SSD.
I wanted to keep my existing Windows 10 install and trick my Thinkpad into continue working with seamlessly without having to reinstall Windows and all my apps on to this new SSD.
So I downloaded and installed Acronis True Image for Western Digital, which is a free download from the WD Support site and selected Clone Disk – Automatic, following the process shown below.
The initial estimate for cloning was 32 minutes but it actually only took 5 minutes.
My Lenovo Thinkpad is designed to make SSD upgrades easy. I double checked my plan against the process on iFixit.
For my first step all I had to do was turn the laptop off, unplug from power, unscrew the laptop back cover and lift it off.
The existing old Samsung SSD was attached with one screw, after that was removed the SSD could be slid out easily.
The next 3 steps are *very important*.
I carefully
- peeled off the grey thermal pad from the new WD drive, put that grey thermal pad aside and removed the WD SSD from the UGREEN enclosure
- peeled off the pink thermal pad from the old Samsung SSD and applied it to the WD SSD
Then I slid the new WD SSD into the laptop slot, screwed it in, replaced the laptop back cover and screwed that back in.
I slotted the old Samsung SSD into the UGREEN enclosure, applied the grey thermal pad and put on the enclosure cover.
Then I downloaded Western Digital Dashboard software from the WD Support page and checked if my new laptop SSD was OK.
It passed all the SMART tests but there was new firmware so I installed that immediately.
With my upgrade complete I now have 4 times the total laptop storage space I started with, the laptop feels slightly faster and it didn’t cost much which is a big win
At time of writing the UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Adapter cost $26.56 and the Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN580 NVMe SSD cost $100.49.
Bear in mind I am an Amazon Prime member so your price may be different if you buy from Amazon as a non Prime member.
Of course you could also buy the SSD enclosure and SSD drive from a local computer store site or in person, I just prefer home delivery.
