Check out our guide to backing up your computer, and make sure you have a full backup of your important data before continuing. It’s completely foolish to start messing around with your hard drive without a backup. WARNING: Make sure you click the “Customize” links on the “Install Additional Software” page and uncheck all the boxes-otherwise EaseUS will try to install some bundled crapware along with its disk cloning tool. ( UPDATE: As of 2020, the free version of EaseUS Todo Backup no longer offers this feature.) Its free version has all the features we need to accomplish the task in front of us, so download the free version and install it like you would any other Windows program. If you’re using a laptop, however, this usually isn’t possible, so you’ll need to buy something like a SATA-to-USB cable (shown right), which will let you connect a 2.5″ hard drive or SDD to your laptop via USB. You can also install your SSD in an external hard drive enclosure before you start the migration process, though that’s a bit more time consuming.

If you have a desktop computer, then you can usually just install your new SSD alongside your old hard drive in the same machine to clone it.

A way to connect your SSD to your computer.

Apart from your SSD, you’ll need a few other things for this process to work.

How to use ssd for boot drive