Speed up your laptop, use a SSD: Solid State Drive: 6b) Plan B: clone old disk to SSD with Clonezilla

Plan B: clone old harddisk to the new harddisk;

Example cloning partitions seperately:
(notice: in this case I performe a clone from SSD in laptop to external HDD so the other way around).

A) Starting point (see picture):

5 partitions on old disk (disk 1)
for assembling a bootable systemdisk the first 2 partitions must be cloned in the same order;
*: SSD system: the first partition is a hidden partition containing boot data; in explorer it won't show;
C:SSD system: the standard C: windows system partition. The "C:" you see in explorer;
in this case partitions E:, D: and F: won't be cloned. Could be the case if there is not enough space o the new disk;
disk 2: target disk with free space in one partition;

(In this example I used AOMEI, you could alsso use EasUs)

B) make target partitions on target disk 2:

Now there are two target partitions on disk 2: G: and I:.

So first partition *: SSD system on old disk will be cloned to partition G: on new disk.
Next partition C:SSD system on old disk will be cloned to partition I on new disk.

To assemble a working bootable windows disk allways these two partitions are needed: SYSTEM RESERVED and SYSTEM.

If partitions D:, E:, F: need to be cloned as well, they each need a separate target partition on
the new disk too.

System recovery partition eq hidden and special partitions:

There could be another hidden partition on the disk. In my case an ACER recovery partition. Its appears in different ways. I didn't migrate this partition so it won't appear in the discribed migrating options and examples.

Normally partition SYSTEM RESERVED is hidden too (hidden or unassigned partitions are always named just "*:"). But I assigned a letter to it so it shows up everywhere.

What does the partitioning tool show: the first partition on disk 1 is hidden: PQSERVICE.

Explorer doesn't show this hidden partition at all even if showing hidden (system) files is enabled in configuration manager:

Windows diskmanager does show this partition but without a volume name. Its called a recovery partition in the status column.

So its best to use a partitioning tool when manipulating partitions (reassigning letter, label, size, etc) because they show all partitions. And its wise to asign a letter to the partitions to be cloned to avoid mistakes.

Steps:

download Clonezilla .iso file on your laptop;
make a bootable Clonezilla DVD by burning .iso file on a DVD
connect new drive using USB to the laptop (see page SATA USB holder)
prepare new disk for cloning: make required partitions;
boot your laptop from Clonezilla DVD;
start the cloning process by using Clonezilla: from internal old disk to external new disk;
place new disk in laptop. Boot from internal drive;

Steps in detail:

1) download .iso file Clonezilla on your laptop.

I used Clonezilla and it worked fine: http://www.clonezilla.org/downloads/download.php?branch=stable.

Why Clonezilla? Well, first of all it did the job right. But it had an additional advantage. It is able to minimize the partitions that are cloned. So if a partition consists of 50 GB used space and 100 GB unused space, it will clone only 50 GB into a new partition. Otherwise you would have to split the partition first into 2 partitions.

2) burn the software to a bootable DVD using freeware software. I used Image burner:

http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

Choose "Create image file from files/folders".

Choose option "Mode" and then "Write":

This screen will appear: as the source choose the .iso file you just downloaded.

Start burning the DVD.

At the end of the process the tray opens automaticly. Close manually to finish the process.

This should be on the DVD now:

3) connect new drive using USB to the laptop: see page SATA USB holder;

4) prepare new disk for cloning:

Every partition on the source disk needs a target partition on the target disk. If whole disk is cloned to a new disk: than 1 partition or a empty disk will do. See example above.