>>>>>>>>>Hi,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>I have a Dell Latitude laptop. And yesterday I started getting messages from Window that there is something wrong with the hard drive. Sorry don't remember exact message. The computer and the drive are about 4 years old.
>>>>>>>>>So I called Dell and they offered a SSD 1 TB drive to put in place of the existing drive.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>My questions are, please:
>>>>>>>>>1. The Dell support person says that since my existing drive is 2.5" and the SSD is 2.5" too, it will fit into the existing slot.
>>>>>>>>>Does this sound right?
>>>>>>>>>2. If I buy SSD drive, can I re-partition it just like I did with the existing conventional drive? To make C:, D:, and E: drives?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>TIA
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Yes to both questions :-)
>>>>>>>>If the SSD drive is Samsung they have utility to clone your existing drive to new SSD disk.
>>>>>>>>So you don't have to install everything again.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Thank you!
>>>>>>>That would be great if I could close the existing drive. If you don't mind my question, the utility has be installed on the existing drive to "copy" the data somewhere and then "Paste" it back, once I replace the drive?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Nope, both drives should be installed and it runs from CD/DVD drive
>>>>>
>>>>>I am confused. My laptop has a space for only one drive so I would not be able to have both, the existing and the new SSD on the same computer. On the top of that, they (DELL) quoted me WD (Western Digital?) 1 TB SSD.
>>>>
>>>>IIRC WD allows you to use 'Acronis True Image' software for free. If you choose a different brand you can buy a copy of Acronis to do the job. There are lots of disk cloning applications out there (some of them are free) but I've not tried any....
>>>>
>>>>FWIW you should see a pretty big performance improvement with SSD....
>>>
>>>Thank you.
>>
>>Just googled Acronis. You should be able to get a copy for a single computer for about $30. Works pretty well as a general backup solution as well...
>
>Thank you. I did try Acronis many, many years ago and for some reason (probably me :)), I had a problem. But I will give it another try.

I've used to clone to SSD a couple of times without a problem. There's a free trial version but I don't think it will *actually* perform the cloning :-{