#Dell replacement hard drives how to#

I opened the XPS 13, replaced the NVMe SSD with the new one, and closed it back up.I created a 'Restore Media' USB boot drive using Macrium Reflect, so I could boot the XPS 13 off of it once I replaced the SSD.I then cloned the internal drive to a second external USB 3.0 hard drive I had sitting around (this drive was larger than the internal SSD so it had enough space to clone all the partitions).apparently that was one adapter too many, because the clone seemed to fail at random places. I tried cloning the internal drive to my new M.2 SSD mounted inside an SATA-to-NVMe/M.2 adapter, which was then plugged into a USB 3.1-to-SATA adapter.

#Dell replacement hard drives how to#

There are countless tutorials on the Internet for how to do a disk clone, but I wanted to point out the process I used since there were a few gotchas: I tried both Macrium Reflect Free and EaseUS Todo Backup, and found Macrium Reflect to be a little easier to work with. Tools used: Spudger, #000 phillips screwdriver, T5 Torx screwdriver. Annoying, but in the end it worked out, so I won't get too angry about it. But on Windows, it seems there's nothing built-in for cloning or imaging a disk-instead you have to download and/or purchase a utility to help with this process.

Disk Utility on macOS, dd on Linux or macOS, etc.). I've upgraded drives in many Macs and on Linux PCs over the years, and the process is pretty painless, with a plethora of freely available options for disk cloning (e.g. I recently purchased a used Dell XPS 13 (model 9360), and I chose to purchase the base option (with 128 GB SSD) since it was cheaper to do that and upgrade the SSD to a larger model (500 GB) aftermarket than to buy a higher model XPS (I bought this model: WD Blue 3D NAND 500GB PC SSD).