How to Replace Hard Drive for MSI Computer Without Reinstalling?

Performing MSI hard drive replacement with AOMEI partition assistant can give you better use of MSI computers.

Dervish

By Dervish / Updated on May 12, 2023

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Why replace MSI hard drive?

MSI (Micro-Star International) is a famous and excellent supplier for computer, gaming laptops, hardware, and other related items.

Msi Laptop

Usually, MSI will pre-install a 1TB HDD or small SSD on each of their laptops like GT70 GT72, which is too smaller for a gaming hard drive. After a period of time, many people would like to upgrade their MSI hard drive. And replace the old MSI hard drive with an SSD, which provides much faster running speed, can be the best solution.

Next, we will show you how to do MSI hard drive replacement that adding a newer or larger SSD and cloning the MSI hard drive to the SSD.

How to replace hard drive for MSI laptops without reinstalling games and OS?

Now, follow the next content, and learn how to replace hard drive for MSI laptops without reinstalling system and applications.

Preparations:

  • A new hard disk or SSD that is compatible with your MSI laptop and system (you can refer to this link to learn how to choose an SSD)

  • An MSI computer with Windows operation system installed.

  • Install a good disk clone tool, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. It is Whether your disk is MBR or GPT partition table, this tool enables you to clone data and system from the old disk to another SSD or HDD successfully

Steps to replace MSI hard drive

AOMEI Partition Assistant allows you to clone a larger disk to smaller SSD/HDD given the SSD is expensive, so your new disk may be smaller than the MSI hard drive. Besides, it provides “Partition Alignment” feature to further improve the MSI computer performance.

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Step 1. Unscrew your MSI computer, and plug the new SSD into it. If there isn't enough space for new hard disk, you can use a hard disk box to connect it.

Step 2. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click the “Clone” menu and select “Clone Disk”.

Clone System Disk

Step 3. And you need to choose a clone method, we recommend choosing “Clone Disk Quickly”.

Clone System Disk Quickly

Tips:
● Clone Disk Quickly: It only clones used space of source disk, allowing you to
clone larger disk to a smaller one as long as the destination disk is big enough to contain the data on the source disk.
● Sector-by-Sector Clone: It clones all sectors of the disk to a destination disk no matter it is used or not, thus the capacity of destination disk has to be larger than or equal to that of the source disk.

Step 4. In this window, you choose the MSI hard drive as the source disk. And click “Next”.

Select Source Disk Clone System Disk Full

Step 5. Choose the new hard drive like an SSD as the destination disk. And you will be prompted that all data on the destination disk will be wiped. And click “Yes”.

Select Destination Disk Clone System Disk Full

✍Note: If the destination disk is not a brand new one, and there are some data you don't want to lose, you need to back up the disk.

Step 6. In this window, you can decide partition size on the destination disk. Choose one at your pleasure, and click “Next”.

Tips:
Copy without resizing partition: It keeps the size of source partitions. But if the destination disk is smaller than the source disk, this option would be greyed out.
Fit partitions to entire disk: AOMEI Partition Assistant will automatically adjust the size of partition to fit the disk.
Edit partitions on this disk: This option allows you to adjust the partition on the destination disk as you wish.

Step 7. Read the note just in case you encounter a boot issue. And click “Finish”.

Step 8. Then you will be back to the main interface, click “Apply” and “Proceed” to replace MSI hard drive with the new drive.

Note: If your computer can only insert one hard drive, you can back up the old MSI hard drive to a USB stick or external hard drive firstly via backup software, then remove the original MSI hard drive, and put the new SSD on where the MSI hard drive used to be. Then restore the MSI image to the SSD drive.
More details can be found in "
Upgrade Hard Drive to SSD for MSI Gaming Laptops".

How to boot from the new MSI hard drive?

After replacing old MSI hard drive to new SSD, restart your computer and set the new MSI hard drive as the boot drive.

Step 1. Press and hold “F2” to “Enter Setup” when you see the first screen.

Step 2. And choose “Change boot order” then set the new MSI hard drive as the boot drive.

Step 3. Press “F10” to save the operation.

If the partition table of the SSD differs from that of MSI hard drive, you need to change your boot mode. For example, if you replace the MBR system disk with an SSD that supports GPT, you need to change BIOS to UEFI.

Conclusion

This is how to perform MSI hard drive replacement, I really hope this article can help you. And the same method applies to different MSI computers like GT70, GT72, GT75, and other computers hard drive replacement.

Moreover, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional provides other great functions; you can just migrate OS to SSD, erase SSD securely, and partition recovery, etc. And if your system is Windows Server, you can upgrade MSI computer or laptop hard drive with AOMEI Partition Assistant Server Edition.

Dervish
Dervish · Staff Editor
Dervish is an English editor of AOMEI Technology; He is delicated to offering users easy and effecitve solutions for issuses related to disks and partitoins. In his spare time, he enjoy wathcning films, playing footable, traveling and so on.