Slow Laptop - Storage Drive Upgrade

Mandy had an old laptop that was painfully slow, especially when opening different programs. I had a look and spotted an immediate flaw with the device, it was using an old type of storage...

Introduction

Mandy had an old laptop that was painfully slow, especially when opening different programs. I had a look and spotted an immediate flaw with the device, it was using an old type of storage...

Initial Diagnosis

I was given the laptop to take a look at and very quickly noticed that the storage drive in it was one of the older spinning disk hard drives.

Due to requiring moving parts, these are much slower than the modern alternative of solid state drives or SSDs.

Steps I took to Fix the Issue

Arranged for the laptop to be left with me for a few days
Ordered a repair kit to open up the laptop to add in a new storage drive
Backed up the data on the laptop
Reinstalled the Windows operating system to the new, faster drive
Copied the data back over to the newly installed Windows
Tested opening apps - this was now much more responsive

Outcome

Mandy now has a much faster laptop that is more suitable for the family including school work and general life admin. It's also been such an improvement that The Sims is now playable on the laptop again.