Quick Answer: Replace ASUS Laptop Hard Drive with SSD

Content of this article:

• Hard drive replacement for ASUS laptop, what are the benefits?
• Replace hard drive with SSD on ASUS laptop: Backup & Restore or Clone
• How do I easily replace ASUS laptop hard drive with SSD
• Make full use of ASUS hard drive: format it for storage
• Conclusion

Hard drive replacement for ASUS laptop, what are the benefits?

HDDs and SSDs are both the most popular disk type on the market, both of them have their own obvious advantages and that's what we are more concerned about. In sum, at the same price, HDDs have bigger capacity while SSDs have higher performance (eg: faster writing and reading speed).

To gain better performance, it's a wise choice to replace ASUS laptop hard drive with SSD. It makes you feel your computer is like a brand-new computer, boot faster, run multiple programs smoothly, etc. This can't be done by cleaning up useless files, deleting large files, unintalling programs no longer used, defragmenting hard disk, etc.

Also, SSDs own a greater security than HDDs. Because SSDs does not have any removable parts internally. To reduce the possibility of losing data to the most extent, it's a wise choice to replace laptop HDD with SSD.

But if your original hard drive works well, the best practice is to use SSD for OS and HDD for storage, which makes full use of advantages of HDDs and SSDs. 

Of course, if you think SSDs are too expensive or just for home use, there is no problem with using a larger disk as replacement. It can makes your computer faster but limited.

Replace hard drive with SSD on ASUS laptop: Backup & Restore or Clone

In fact, the replacement hard drive for ASUS laptop is a reasonably simple task, whether for ASUS X555L hard drive replacement or for ASUS Q302LA/ASUS Q504U. You just need to open the back cover and replace the old hard drive with your new SSD. However, how about all the data stored on the old hard drive? Just leave them behind?

Well, if you don’t care about the old files and don’t mind installing all of your programs one by one, you still can reinstall Windows 10, 11, 8, 7 on the SSD so that your laptop/desktop can start normally. It's a time-consuming and problematic job.

>> If you need to keep all your programs and data without costing you a cent, it's suggested to backup disk or system and then restore disk or system image to new hard drive or SSD. 

>> For easier way, you can clone laptop/desktop HDD to SSD directly, with system files, installed applications, and all of your data files copied over.

To make it, you need an all-in-one software integrated with backup & restore or clone function. I strongly recommend you AOMEI Backupper.

How do I easily replace ASUS laptop hard drive with SSD

As mentioned earlier, you have two working ways to perform ASUS laptop hard drive upgrade, namely upgrade ASUS laptop with backup and restore solution, clone laptop HDD to SSD. Then, which method should you use?

>>  If your laptop only has one slot, you could first backup your disk to an external hard drive, then swap hard drive and SSD and restore the image externally to new SSD. Or you can also choose to backup and restore system image from external hard drive. And it's totally free of charge. 

>> If your laptop has two slots or it's a desktop, you could directly clone the entire hard drive to another drive, even smaller SSD, or migrate only operating system (supported on the professional version) as per your needs. There is no doubt that this cloning method will be much easier.

Now, you need to make some preparations and ensure the operation can run smoothly.
❤ Get an SSD with right interface and thickness. Also, a screwdriver to swap laptop/desktop hard drive is required.
❤ For laptop, you need to prepare a SATA adapter or an encloser to connect new SSD for cloning. 
❤ Clean up your ASUS hard drive to fit on the new SSD.
❤ Download AOMEI Backupper Standard and install it on your computer. Then, create a disk image or system image to make an exact copy of your computer.  If it is unbootable, you still need to create a recovery disk via "Create Bootable Media".

Method 1: ASUS SSD upgrade with disk backup and restore 

To backup disk in  ASUS laptop, plug your external hard drive and initialize it, launch this freeware, click "Disk Backup" under the Backup tab, click "+ Add Disk" to add your ASUS hard drive, then select destination path and click "Start Backup".

Note: To customize your backup task, please click "Options" or "Schedule Backup" to set it up. You can comment the task to distinguish it from other tasks, or continuously backup disk with daily/weekly/monthly schedule backup, etc.

To switch ASUS laptop hard drive, free up the laptop back cover with screwdrivers and place the screws in the small box, plug the plastic card in the gap, twist and move it to take off the cover, use screwdrivers to free up hard drive frame and replace with SSD, then install all stuff to the previous locations. At last, turn on the laptop and start to restore disk image.

To restore disk with backup image to your computer, plug your external hard drive containing image and run this software, click "Restore" > "Select Image File" > "Restore the entire disk", then select SSD as destination path and click "Start Restore". If you are asked to backup important files first, click "OK" to continue.

In general, if your disk image is saved externally, such as, external drive, NAS, network location, you need to manually locate the image by "Select Image File". But if your image can be detected, you can click "Select Task" as instead.

Tips ✎... 
❤ "SSD Alignment" will be helpful when you want to boost the performance of SSDs, such as, faster reading and reading speed. 
❤ If you want to restore a computer with different hardware, "Universal Restore" in advanced version is necessary. Because it can resolve the incompatibility drivers and make your computer boot successfully.

Method 2: Directly replace ASUS laptop hard drive 

This is a quick method. Unlike "Backup and Restore", the cloned hard drive or SSD can be used to boot computer directly without restoring image file. If you are currently using free backup software - AOMEI Backupper Standard, please upgrade to the professional version first. 

To replace ASUS laptop hard drive, you JUST need to prepare a new SSD and be sure it uses the same disk type (MBR or GPT) as old disk. And it does not matter if it is not, you can use its Edit Partitions features to convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT or vice versa. You can also use it adjust partition size if the new SSD is larger. 

Before starting to clone disk partition, you need to check disk type for both. 

• Go to Disk Management, right click the hard disk or SSD and choose Properties > Volume > Partition Style, then you will see MBR or GPT at the right side.

• Check the new SSD with the sam steps. If they are MBR or GPT, you don't need to convert the disk type. Just pay attention to the disk capacity in case the clone hard drive unallocated space left. 

Step 1. Plug your new SSD hard drive into laptop via connector, or directly install SSD on your desktop. Then select "Clone" and "Disk Clone".

Step 2. Select your ASUS hard drive (eg: disk 0) and click "Next".

Step 3. Select your new SSD as Destination disk and click "Next".

Step 4. Tick SSD Aignment to gain peak performance of the SSD if you are cloning disk partition to SSD. Optionally, click Edit Partitions to convert disk type or adjust partition size with the following options. 

• Convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT: It helps to convert the partition style of the destination disk if it is different from the source disk. 
• Copy without resizing partitions: It will not resize the partition size.
• Add unused space to all partitions: It will reallocate the unallocated space to each partition of the target disk, appropriate for the disk size.
• Manually adjust partition size: It allows you to extend unallocated space to any partition on the destination disk you want. 

Notes:
✔ It also helps to clone MBR to GPT disk without losing data, and vice versa. 
✘ If you use the Edit Partitions feature, the "Sector by sector clone" will be unavailable. It is used to  clone all sectors of a hard drive. 

Step 5. Preview the Operation Summary and click "Start Clone" to run the disk cloning process. 

Step 5. Take out hard drive and add the new SSD disk with screwdriver. Then, boot computer from it.

This software is still an M.2 SSD cloner, so you can use it to migrate Windows 10 to M.2 SSD, clone M.2 SSD to M.2 SSD, etc.

Make full use of ASUS hard drive: format it for storage

Formating old disk is the last thing to add SSD to laptop/desktop and keep HDD. As mentioned before, SSDs have a higher performace while HDDs always have a larger capacity. Therefore, if your HDD is still working well, you could consider using it as storage. Now, let's start to format disk and restore files to HDD.

To format disk, press "Win +R" and type "diskmgmt.msc "in the box, then hit "OK" to open the Disk Management. Next, right-click the HDD disk and select "Format...", follow on-screen instructions to finish the rest of steps.

To restore files from backup, connect your external drive with file backup, launch AOMEI Backupper, click "Restore" and "Select Image File", select the files or folders that need to be restored, tick "Restore to new location" and select HDD as storage, finally click "Start Restore".

Conclusion

That’s all for how to replace hard drive in ASUS laptop. There are two methods in total, and it's not difficult to see that the second one is much easier. With the cloning method, you can directly boot from the clone SSD without restoring image first. Also, you can use it to clone NVMe SSD, perform Dell Inspiron SSD upgrade, HP laptop SSD upgrade, Toshiba laptop hard drive replacement, etc.

Aside from above functions, AOMEI Backupper can still provide other functions, such as system backup, file backup, file sync, etc. In a word, AOMEI Backupper not only can help you upgrade hard drive to SSD, but also can be your best assistant in helping you keep your data safe all the time. Just download it to explore yourself!