Once you have the drive out, you’ll need a dock to connect a bare drive to your computer via USB. You can buy a dock online for around $25. The dock will power the drive and you’ll know pretty ...

Assuming your laptop currently has a standard hard drive, it is almost certainly a 2.5 Inch SATA drive. So, you will be replacing it with an SSD of the same size and interface (internal connections).

Step 2: If your laptop has a hard drive, or older 2.5-inch SATA SSD, you should see it locked in place with a few screws and a pair of cables. Remove all of those before gently pulling the drive free.

Your computer constantly uses empty hard drive space for temporary memory, so it’s not just about having enough space to save your data. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

An external hard drive and a laptop (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson) HOW TO TRANSFER PHOTOS AND VIDEOS FROM YOUR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE AND APPLE DEVICES. Transferring files on a Windows PC.