HP Envy 15-as133cl Laptop Hard Drive Upgrade

2.5" SSDs are dense enough and cheap enough now that it makes sense to replace 2.5" HDDs. I have been using a M.2 NVMe SSD in this laptop for GNU+Linux, but I still had Windows on the original hard drive. However, whenever I had to boot into Windows, I was reminded just how slow Windows and hard drives are.

First, I used the dd command to mirror the one hard drive to the other. I used a StarTech USB 3.0 to SATA converter. I unmounted the hard drive, then ran dd, which took the better part of a day. Then, it was time for the physical replacement.

Before

The old hard drive weighed in at 89 grams. The new SSD weighed 38 grams, less than half the weight.

After

The real savings should be in power and response times. I tested that Windows still boots, and it only took several seconds. I did not measure the boot times, but it seemed much faster. Time will tell.