By default, your drive will be automatically optimized.) If it detects your drive as an SSD, instead of defragmenting the drive, it will optimize it for the TRIM command, which improves the performance of your SSD. (By the way, SSDs should not be defragmented.
Physically connect the SSD. Place the SSD in the enclosure or connect it to the USB-to-SATA adapter, and then connect it to your laptop with the USB cable. Now we'll get the SSD set up for the cloning process.ġ. Make one last uncluttering sweep with freeware CCleaner, which deletes old temp files and other space hogs, or at the very least run Windows' disk cleanup (in Windows search - look for 'disk cleanup,' then choose 'Free up disk space on this PC').
Clean up your drive for additional space. This is also the time to uninstall programs you aren't using anymore and delete unnecessary files that you don't want carried over to your SSD. If this is the case, move larger folders-such as those containing your photos, videos, games, and personal documents-to an external drive or other location to make enough space on your drive for cloning to the smaller SSD.ģ. Move large folders that don't need to be kept on the SSD. Chances are your hard drive is larger than the SSD you are transferring to (for example, moving from a 500GB HDD with lots of media files to a 120GB SSD).
