Upgrade the hard drive in any system using hard drive cloning software and a USB external hard drive adapter cable, without the need to reinstall. Avoid the hassle of loading the operating system and drivers, and keep programs and data files intact. The hard drive cloning software does all the work by copying the entire hard drive to a larger drive and increasing the space of each partition automatically. Save hours of time and keep your desktop familiar and settings while gaining more free hard drive space by using a disk cloning software package for hard drive upgrades.
1 download and install a hard drive cloning software package (acronis.com/content/11400, seagate.com, or support.wdc.com).
2 Connect the USB external hard drive adapter to one of the available USB ports on the back of the computer. Allow the operating system to load the necessary drivers and insert the driver disk if prompted to do so.
3 Shut down your computer using the “Shut Down” or “Power Off” feature such as sleep, hibernation or standby.
4 Connect the new hard drive to the USB external hard drive adapter and connect a power cable to the new hard drive. Power on the system and allow the operating system to load normally.
5 Launch the disk cloning software and click “Tools & Utilities” from the main menu.
6 Click “Clone Disk” and click “Next” on the next screen to select an automatic clone operation.
7 click “Proceed” on the cloning summary screen. Allow the operating system to restart so that the disk cloning operation can proceed. Turn off the computer when the cloning operation is complete.
8 Disconnect the hard drive from the power cable and external USB hard drive adapter, and remove the adapter from the computer.
