I noticed that the sizes for laptop hard drives and SSDs seem to be identical in size.
My laptop currently contains a SATA hard drive. Is it possible for me to just pop in an SSD drive in place of the current hard drive and use that instead, or does my computer's hardware need any special features in order to support SSDs? To the computer is there anything special about SSDs, or are they transparently treated just like any other storage device?
Best Answer
Regarding the similar size, you are correct. The majority of SSD's are 2.5-inch drives. Laptops similarly usually use HDD's that are 2.5-inch. If you were to change out your HDD for an SSD, you would of course have to transfer all content to the new medium, but otherwise it would work perfectly (with some performance boosts too!). I've personally done such upgrades to laptops of varying ages, and all have worked perfectly.