... as OF is the only one i frequently visit, i need to write it down here. I promised a colleague to post this somewhere on the web, if it works, and it did. Yesterday, an HDD running Windows 10 failed. Last time i had a similar experience was some years ago and that system was running WinXP. Needless to say, i was unable to get the XP OS running on another HDD and it cost me hours and hours to set up from scratch. Some of you will be able to relate to the feelings i have felt back then. Back to yesterday: Replaced the failed HDD with a good one, that was laying around. Put in my System Repair Disk (DVD) into the drive. Connected the USB-Drive featuring the SystemImage. Made a few clicks after booting from the DVD. Waited for an hour. Back was my Windows 10 environment. Piece of cake. Maybe this is old news to you, but it was a whole new experience to me. Looks like i might be able to change to an SSD from my HDD in my notebook this way.
Changing from a HDD to an SSD is one of, if not the best upgrades you can make. I did it on my ancient MacBook Pro and it gave it a whole new life. I bought a cheap USB/SATA cable to clone the existing HDD (using free software easily downloadable), undid a few screws and Bob’s your uncle.
I did the same sort of thing recently on my 5 year old desktop rig. What I liked was the ability to clone my hard drive to a slightly smaller SSD. Obviously the total data was well within the capacity of the new SSD. What I did was do a quick bit of BIOS fiddling to get the SSD recognised as the new C drive and then stuck the old drive back in the case, renamed it as drive Z and now use it for backups.
Had a HDD on a 10+-year-old WinXP laptop crash about 6 months ago. Was able to image to a new HDD, and the laptop has been fine since. I think it really has to do with the level of damage on the bad HDD.
Yes, SSD's are a great upgrade path for older machines with HDD. I've bought a few used/broken macbooks on craigslist, upgraded the RAM and added solid state drives, the MacOS experience with upgraded hardware is a great low cost alternative for any type of computing. All important data is saved in the multiple cloud sources I have, so rebuilding machines is somewhat of a hobby/obsession for me.