Have an Intel 480 SSD which I like very much.

[SWEST4]

That's only 2 months old and in my old laptop. I have a new powerful laptop on the way. My question is, what is the process of taking it out of my old laptop and placing in my new one and get it up and running?

[jsull5]

To answer the question myself, I was able to use the Intel Data Migration Toolkit (IDMT) and build a Bootable Recovery USB (it's an option in the IDMT). I then booted into that Recovery Environment, with the SSD in an enclosure and attached to the USB3 port.

Rebooting using the Novo reset pin, got the Boot Menu, which sees all the USB attached devices. Boot off the Recovery USB, got a message that it couldn't see the SSD, but then the software did see it and performed the Data Migration to the SSD. Wait a while for the data to be transferred, swap the drives (something I'm getting good at) and, Boom!, SSD level performance.

Thanks for the suggestion to use the Bootable Recovery.

With the IDMT, you need to have an enclosure that supports Device ID. I used an enclosure from Insignia: http://www.insigniaproducts.com/cms/documents/manuals/NS-PCHD235_NS-PCHD235-C_Manual_EN.pdf http://www.insigniaproducts.com/cms/documents/manuals/NS-PCHD235_NS-PCHD235-C_Manual_EN.pdf