Operation SSD Swap is a Success ⭐

After a several-year detour in which laptop makers sacrificed serviceability for thinness, we’re back in a good place. All the laptops I’ve reviewed over the past few years are serviceable, most to some degree by the end user. And that means that we can replace parts when they break or upgrade certain components. And that we can do so without violating a warranty.

I just experienced that.

As you may know, I recently reviewed the HP OmniBook 5 16-inch, an inexpensive Snapdragon X-based consumer laptop that with terrific performance, battery life, and reliability despite its modest internal components. I love this laptop and find it superior to most x64 laptops costing three times as much or more. But as I noted in my review, the entry-level configuration that I purchased has one downside: It came with 256 GB of SSD storage. And 256 GB is not enough, not for my needs. Not for anyone's, I think.

And so I set out to upgrade that SSD and replace it with a larger-capacity drive.
? First steps
The first thing I did was something I do in the course of writing any laptop review: I found its maintenance and service guide to see what was possible and saved a copy locally so I could refer to it when the time came to upgrade the SSD.

The second also occurred while writing the review: I looked up my specific OmniBook 5 configuration, of course, but also the other available configurations, and this told me that the part in question is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD on an M.2 card. Which is about as standard these days as standard can be.

Next up, I searched Amazon Mexico for that type of SSD and found a 1 TB Crucial SSD for about MXN$1560, which is roughly $85 USD. (This drive is $69 at Amazon’s US store, so that’s not bad. Electronics are often quite expensive in Mexico.) I ordered it this past Sunday, the day I finished my review, and it arrived here the next day.

And then I realized I had more to do. Probably.
? Getting ready
There were two ways I could replace the drive:

I could create Windows 11 (on Arm) installation media, swap out the drives, and then boot the PC with the installation media, install Windows 11 on Arm to the empty new SSD, and hope for the best. It’s likely that I could get the drivers going over Windows Update once I signed in, and I may have to connect the laptop to Ethernet first. But HP has a nice download for these drivers, too. So the probability of success was pretty good.
I could clone my existing 256 GB SSD to the new 1 TB SSD and not lose my configuration with all my installed apps and synced data. That approach was most appealing to me, but it would require a bit of work.

I decided to try the second approach, but that meant I needed a way to connect the new SSD to the laptop via USB. I have such a thing for HDDs in Pennsylvania, but I’ve never owned a USB-based SSD enclosure. So I did as before and searched Amazon Mexico for something suitable. This is a one-off thing so I went for cheap cost and...