SSD'ing a HP All-in-one, Drive Snapshot Waffle - LFC 

thanks for taking the time to record, showcase, educate, and edit, much appreciated!!!

FYI Macrium Reflect with auto fit data/partitions from a larger drive to a smaller drive. It works for me 90% of the time, but in rare cases I have to do it manual, but nice thing I can do it right in Macrium Reflect.

I just did two of these HP AIOs and 6 laptops for a local doctor's office. All received 1tb SSDs and full drive cloning. I really tried to talk the good doctor into fresh installations and just file transfers, but he was adamant about cloning following a chat with his son (who doesn't know anything about anything but probably did a 2 second Google search on the matter)..... Oh well, everything went smoothly, I just worry about inherited problems down the road.

Cool, concise, informative, and entertaining channel. I saw you on Paul Daniels' live chat. Had to sub n thumbs. Cheers from SLC!

I've seen a youtuber that had some cool 2.5 to 3.5 inch "converters", it looks like a real 3.5 inch mechanical hard drive, but in the back, there is a small door where you can slide the ssd in, and once you close it, it mounts right into that bracket you have there, and it looks like you did install a mechanical hard drive (the customer might think you didn't even install an ssd in the first place), and it has the connecters right in the corner where they are on a 3.5 inch drive! It's really cool and very easy to install!

I did the same thing on my parent's HP all in one last year. I did the two screw method to secure the SDD. I probably should have just did what you did with double sided tape. The computer itself is so underpowered it could barely get out of its own way. Thanks for the video!!

You're very experienced. Love it

I did not know how to remove restore points before this video, Thank you!!!

MX500 is a great SSD for this kind of use case. Little bit more expensive than bottom of the barrel SSD. It has a DRAM cache and has TLC in a world of QLC and DRAM-less SSD's.

I can recommend ''ORICO 2.5 to 3.5" HDD SSD Mount Bracket'' when it comes to mounting 2.5 drive in 3.5 bracket, they have the correct orientation and works perfect :D They're like £7-8 each on Amzon though, but they're perfect when it comes to computers when you can't route the cables to the drive :)

Brilliant I was holding my breath as you were getting the screen out lol

hot glue. Oh yeah, and breaking the screen, we've all done it!

Everytime I watching your video, I feel like I'm chatting with a good friend. Also, you should considerate about getting mech with quote from previous video "poor mans hot tweezers". That one is gold.

Macrium Reflect Free. Excellent backup & restore program.

Oh, I like using velcro strips. That way in the future, if you need to take it out it's so much easier!

With Respect, Adam, if you're dealing with an AIO you don't know, i suggest u RTFM before using prying tools to release the display (trial & error style) causing possible damage. thanks a bunch for the great videos.

I like using double sided gorilla tape. it's fairly easy to get off, but it's slightly gooey and stretchy and doesn't leave behind residue. it will take a lot of force to dislodge a few inches of the stuff

Another couple of mounting options, I've found hot glue holds small parts like SSDs quite well and of course peels off pretty easy if you do need to remove it, alternately I know you said you don't like plastic, but this would be a fantastic use case for a 3D printer, instead of buying loads of adapters/brackets you can print them as needed and make custom ones for these sort of trays.

I had the same issue fitting an ssd into a drive cage and I went on Thingiverse and printed a couple of adapters that worked perfectly!

Absolutely brilliant information graham, I really enjoyed this video. May i ask a favour,on behalf of my self ,and the other people watching this please, Could you possibly,place a link into the Descripition,of the different drive adapter connectors ,that you described in this video please,,thanking you most kindlly

Wow. This is surely a really well explained video. I am looking at updating the ram and memory on my dell pc which i have never done. Someone recommended cloning the ssd and linked to this video. I honestly don't have a clue what actually happened. Was this video on how to clone? Thanks for all your time to help.

It's always good to refresh ones memory on resizing drives, the average home users may do it once or twice. I did last year but got too obsessed with tiding the partitions on my, now 4 drive PC I removed the windows boot sector on drive D thinking drive C was safe as my windows disk, but Win10 had other ideas when it installed it to D drive. MBR rebuild or clean install, after a lot of swearing I manged it without the need for a clean install. 👌✌

It's great to see someone else who uses Drive Snapshot, which I purchased it in early 2016 for around £30 and has been perfect on every single computer that I've used it on and I usually run it via batch scripts to make it be fully automated (as it does so much more than what you see in the GUI). Drive Snapshot used to it's full potential really is one beast of a program.

You could unplug the cables from the board and route the smaller ends of those through the hole and then the big plug end will be where it's needing to be.

After seeing the honeycomb holes only line up with one screw I would have drilled 2 or 3 new holes. Use your 2.5" to 3.5" adapter as a template to mark the new hole locations.

SSD'ing is like something I've done for over a decade now and never though of describing it so simple and efficient. Used Acronis and Macrium Reflect; I had no idea about Drive Snapshot. Nice video, I had one AIO like this to do the same - just Intel not AMD and same 1 TB 3.5" HDD that I was not expecting in such a machine that was supposed to be modern and well designed. 2005-performance storage in 2017-2018+ machines, wow... And they are expensive for what low specs they have, no battery, not portable and don't get me started about the screens...

19:16 How good of an idea could be? We can't be sure of the state of the Windows installation or the programs. The customer maybe aware of the backup restore points and may try to use them to restore to working state. The drive includes one real partition with the data and the Windows installation, it's even trickier to repair with the 512 MB partition that you removed (as far I remember from experience of incidentally removing mine).

Disk to Disk cloning tend to screw up with software licenses like Office and Adobe. I just make an image then re-image the new drive with said image. Yes it takes longer but I don't have to call the client as ask for their license for xyz software that no longer works due to failed license authentication.

I use self-adhesive Velcro strips to mount SSD drives. That way they are removable.

I work in IT myself, I usually use either HDClone, Ghost or sometimes Macrium. I've never heard of this software but it does look proper interesting & will definitely give this ago specifically for failing drives. What would you use to clone Mac drives? I'm newly subbed & loving the content.

Thank you.

I do have a usb to sata adapter but it dosent have external power supply jack so it can only support 2.5inch drives, but does work if you need to transfer files from a laptop harddrive thats failing to a SSD

Love your videos. That hoodie is spot on 😂 Also what watch are you wearing? Looks cool..

You are using an older Snapshot Version 1.44, current version is 1.50. I use Snapshot in my privacy invironment and I am satisfied with the performance. Nevertheless with this video I learned some tricks for the future. Thanks and stay healty

Greetings from Canada, love your videos!! Sent you an email for repair of several motherboards. I know you dont check often so I thought I'd message you here so you can check LOL

Graham, for your 2.5“ in 3.5“ mounting needs you need the „Sabrent BK-PCBS“. With that it fit perfectly in those all-in-one upgrades (also useful for NAS sometimes) and it’s high quality. It costs 10£ on Amazon UK.

I have 3 AIO a HP ...Dell and a imac .The HP and imac are stupid hard to get into but the dell is just a trap door so easy to chang HD and RAM

Here's my strategy for dealing with products made by HP: 1). carry item to top of long staircase, preferably with concrete stairs 2). hurl item to bottom of staircase 3). go home

With regards to fixing the drives I would use Velcro to fix the drive that way the drive can be removed later if needed ( I have done this with a few system I have built )

Hi Adam have you ever watched Adrian Digital Basement he works on computers just the old stuff, his camera layout may interest you. Keep up the good work, live long and prosper.

I feel like the only decent adapter brackets are those that line up the SATA connector where it's supposed to be. The material is of much less consequence.

Any chance you could do a tool bench tour in a video soon please? All the tools you use and recommend? A lot of people (fans like me) would purchase what you use. Set up affiliate links and I’ll be happy to purchase through you!

You could just drill two holes on the original bracket that match the holes of the SSD and call it a day.

haha funny you should post this video - tomorrow I am doing exactly the same job (to a laptop though not an AIO) - old mechanical to SSD - in this case an NVME. I will be using clonezilla as it's what I have on my multiboot external NVME. Seeing the look on a customers face who are used to mechanical hard drive speeds when they first boot their new SSD'ed machine never gets old. "F**k me this thing is so fast now, you're amazing" ;)

I know you said that people are going to go in the comments and say use this program and use that program but I wanna place another vote for macrum reflect, its free for home use (so try it on one of your machines) and for commercial the cost is very manageable, I like it because I can do on device clones if the drive is in good shape, it boots into PE so you can do checkdisk if you suspect drive failure (logical) and can image to a NAS if needed as well, for the failing ones I usually use DDRescue in Parted Magic but I have been wanting to switch that to HDDSuperClone because that just went free and open source (also a good video idea btw since it can do SOME of what a PC3000 can do for free now) for images in between I give the customer back the drive so its there responsibility but if the drive is needing ddrescue then I store for 30 days and use Spaces+batch script to automate that either way man your great and I love your videos keep it up :)

I just want to shout out that I have had great success cloning big-to-small using Macrium Reflect for Windows. I have not seen how it handles bad sectors, yet. But I highly recommend checking it out! Macrium will also make snapshots of disks.

brilliant video

You need to use the 2.5 to 3.5 adapters that replicate the exact positioning of a 3.5 harddrive. Good luck finding them anymore though. I would have measured the hole spacing and drilled my own on the oem caddy. It's a shame HP didn't add those holes by default. Also, HP could have just included a ssd for a boot drive by default ffs.

Could you imagine if iMac's were that easy to take apart to repair? This makes me want to actually recommend these to people

Crucial and Samsung give u a dload for Samsung data migration / acronis for crucial that should make it a breeze. usually

Why not drill holes in the original plate that align with the SSD? I like your vids due to the straightforward approach to dismantling the machine and the thoroughness of your reasons for using particular software, etc. Cheers.

Great Work Adam, you're the🐐

I use Macrium Reflect Free and it works fine for me. Easy as 1 2 3.

Nice job.

Surprise demo on the proper use of Drive Snapshot on modern Windows....nice =)

The main reason I don't use Windows for disk imaging is that windows cannot keep its grubby fingers off the drives being imaged.

I dig your hoodie 😊

I like to use Velcro tape from Amazon, a large roll goes a LONG way and can be used for many attachment issues and can be removed/reinstalled infinitely without issue. I enjoy seeing other techs run-across these oddball issues and their respective solutions.

Orico adapter is what you need

i like to resize the drive partition if possible with the free version of aomei partition assistant before imaging to transfer to a new but smaller ssd drive and i can resize it later after the drive is duplicated on the new one. backup to file and restore from file works best with most programs and i prefer to use a PE environment i personalized myself with many useful tools to do such things and diagnose and repair lots of problems.

Hi Adam that was a tricky job to do especially getting the screen off anyway enjoyed your vid through out.

6:00 - I was pulling a face like Tommy out of snatch attempting to fire a gun out of a car window.

Should have watched that earlier :D Got a similar puzzle with HP all-in-one PC. There was a hard mounted SATA connector on the PCB (like common laptop) located bottom right of the cage. Ending up with few layers of rubber tiles (with double sided tape) under and above the ssd. It was real pain to get the heights correct to have just the right amount of force so it will not wobble and not cracking the ssd case at the same time :D

I've used zip ties to attach SSDs to some very old cases.

The cable will actually hold it in place in the event the tape fails so you have quite a bit of insurance there.

28:31 What about just drill holes (2 of them diagonally or even one near the SATA connector?) on metal shroud or even adapter where screws of SSD are located?

Great video regarding the hard drive data install. But I think I would of mounted the drive with screws. Then again I suppose these ssd drives aren't really that heavy. If it some how manages to come away from the tape, it isn't going to matter much anyway.

Redrill the screw holes in the adapter plate.

I think it's always the screws with arrows.

You could drill holes in the adaptor plate.

pretty awesome thank you for the video those USB to HDD/SSD/NVME adaptors devices (what ever people call it XD ) are always 100% pretty useful sadly not enough video's on those

3d printer and print a correct mount, or velco

As always cool videos very informative thanks I recently laid hands on an old HP pavilion 20 all in one specs 2GB DDR3 500GB hard disk the CPU is an AMD runs at 1Ghz works off a 19 volts laptop style power brick the previous owner had it running in windows 10 but ran like crap I picked it up for about roughly £25 I say roughly as I live aboard can't remember pounds to Peso it was supposed to be a buy upgrade and resell but it seems to have remained beside my bed for movies Even tho I haven't had the time to upgrade the memory and hard disk yet I did reformat the drive and installed windows 8.1 and I'm very surprised how quick this machine runs it boots up into windows very quick leaves my much newer laptop standing haha Currently I'm toying with the idea of bunging 8GB ram in it it can take up to 16 and bung an SSD in to it also but just cannot make my mind up on how I will install the SSD as I got 2 choices either take out the big 500GB and then replace with the SSD or leave the drive in there and use an adaptor that I can out the SSD into and it will replace the DVD drive and just keep the old drive as storage But am surprised with how little is inside of the all in one shown on this video because mine has a shit load of metal shielding in it that covers up everything and is heavy as f**k

Really would love some affiliate links for those 3 items you use(I have two of them). That last one you're doing a video on, I'd like to know a little more about. :)

like the top mate

I hate working on AIOs… I jacked up the screen once on a Lenovo 520 AIO taking it apart to upgrade it. It went pretty smooth in fact, seemed to go perfect BUT when I put it together and powered it on, the fkin screen was cracked in the corner..😡 There’s no good reason they needed to make opening them up such a pain in the ass.. Anyways, it’s in my spare parts pile now.. I bought it for $50 . I was gonna upgrade it and sell it, and I’m not dropping $250 on another screen..

I think it is better to leave in the Windows recovery/troubleshooting partition.

I use a 3D printer to make 3.5 to 2.5 adapters, then you can also customize them.

I put the full Snapshot image on a spare empty drive of appropriate size and then use Macrium Reflect to resize it to the smaller SSD.

Have you tried macrium

for bad drives i use roadkills unstoppable copier

I would use a ziptire for the ssd. :D Even with a 15 year old laptop (like the one on my shop) a ssd can improve everything. And the small and good ones are so cheap now. 1TB is overkill for most people, so.

Why wouldn't you repaste it while you have it apart? Everytime I take a laptop apart I always repaste.

i love you

Use Servo tape for RC Cars, that stuff never fails LOL

Hi. I love watching your videos which I find very interesting. I was wondering if you could help me. I have an early 2014 MacBook Air I have MagSafe chargers but they don’t fit the port I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction to get the correct charger that fits. Very kind regards Jeremy

Removing the recovery partition was not a good move. It was not the HP's crappy oem recovery partition. It was in fact the windowsRE partition that the os uses to enter into RE environment which is sometimes useful if the os update fails for example. As far as i remember thie partition is required to use any of the advanced uitilities while shift-rebooting.

Is that a gigabyte x470 gaming 7 i see? I just recently bought one for my rig. The rgb is glorious.

are there adhesive strips you could use with pull strips for later maintenance?

why not drill a 4 holes in the adapter plate???

NEVER use metal pry tools on plastic. It will leave a mark. Serious NO GO!!!

Amazing video, and very informative. Do you know if Drive Snapshot enables TRIM on SSD by default?

Ps have you ever done any work on LINUX base computer systems!

dude explained sNice tutorialt like it was soone who knew everytNice tutorialng already but just needed to make sotNice tutorialng

Old version of Easeus todo backup free. Cloning and backup are awesome to the point Easeus nerfed the free version

what is that big pc case at you're desk where you used drive snapshot i really want to buy one just like that

What is the current price of the MX500 nowdays?

What is the hard drive dock you are use Graham

LOL painfully watching you take that screen apart man, Shouldn't be that difficult.

Before removing and trying to clone the spinning hard drive, might want to first run CHKDSK, no? In order to avoid hiccups when cloning to the SSD.