Quick Upgrade: Replace HP Laptop HDD with SSD

Overview

Replacing the hard drive in an HP nc6400 business laptop is incredibly simple. These older business laptops from HP and Dell were designed for field serviceability. No disassembly required—just flip it over, remove a panel, swap drives. In this quick tech tip, I replace the old spinning disk with a brand new 240GB SSD.

Key Moments

• Using a foam pad to protect the laptop while working
• Removing the easy-access drive bay cover
• Captive screws that don’t fall off the cover
• Removing the single screw holding the drive caddy
• Sliding the drive tray out using the pull tab
• Transferring four screws from old drive to SSD
• Sliding the new SSD back in and securing

Full Transcript (Edited)

Alright, so in this quick tech tip I’m going to be replacing the regular old spinning disk drive on this HP laptop with a 240 gig SSD. For that you’ll need something soft like a foam pad or a rubber working area so you can flip the laptop without scratching it, a Phillips head screwdriver, and the actual SSD. Let’s get started.

What we’re going to do is prepare the working area here, move over the pad, and flip this upside down and find out where the drive goes. In this case, this is a business laptop, so it’s really easy to work with. The hard drive is underneath this cover. Here’s the memory, there’s some other things that are accessible here. What we need to do is get these screws off here so that we can see the hard drive.

Given that this is a business laptop, it was meant to be worked on in the field, and you can—the screws don’t even fall off from the cover! You can just lift it off, and then you’re presented with one more screw. This one comes off right here. Then this entire thing has a little tab here, so you can see that, and you just pull this back. So the drive shifts that way, and you can lift it up.

Now I need to insert that drive into this. To do that, you need to remove these four screws: one, two, three, four. Now that I removed those four screws from the drive, you can see here that I can easily lift it off the tray. This is the old drive. Now we can take the new SSD out of the packaging here. This guy goes in like that. You can see here the holes align. What I’m going to do now is put those screws back on this one.

There you have it—the SATA drive is in there and the screws are in here. Now all we have to do is reverse the process. We lay that flat like that, and this will slide over. As you can see here, make sure to gently wiggle it into place. There you go, it’ll slide in. We tighten this screw, put the cover back in, and we’re done. The laptop is ready—old drive out and the new SSD is in!

If you like these kind of tips, let me know. Hopefully they’re helpful to you. Again, these old business laptops from HP and also from Dell are great because they’re so easy to work with. The new stuff, you’re gonna have to take a lot more off. Until next time, bye!