I'm building a gaming desktop and already bought a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, but I limited the storage to 1TB because of the price. My laptop also has a 500GB SSD, and the laptop is in poor condition: the battery only works when plugged in, most USB ports are unreliable, and the case and touchpad are damaged. Since I'll mainly use the new PC for gaming, I'm considering removing that SSD and adding it to the desktop for extra storage. Is this worthwhile, and what's the safest way to erase the existing Windows installation and prepare the drive for use?
4 Answers
Yes, you can reuse it as long as the drive is healthy and compatible with your motherboard. Install Windows on the new 1TB drive first, then connect the old SSD and use Disk Management to delete its existing partitions and format it as a secondary storage drive. Be absolutely sure you select the old drive before erasing anything.
Given the battery, ports, cracked case, and broken touchpad, keeping the laptop probably isn’t very useful unless you need a backup computer. Just make sure you copy anything important from it before wiping the drive.
Check what kind of M.2 drive the laptop has before buying an adapter or trying to install it. Some laptops use M.2 SATA SSDs rather than NVMe drives, and they aren’t interchangeable in every motherboard slot. If the desktop supports that interface, or you have the appropriate adapter, reusing the drive should be fine.
You can also use a secure-erase option in the laptop or desktop BIOS if it supports one. Afterward, boot into Windows on the new drive and initialize and format the reused SSD through Disk Management. A normal format is usually sufficient if you just want to remove the old Windows installation; secure erase is more thorough if you’re concerned about leftover data.
That’s what I was thinking. It’s barely usable now, and I’ll be replacing its main purpose with the desktop, so I’d rather get some extra storage out of it.