freez82

Can you send a pic of the disk management screen.

If you're in a quiet room you should be able to hear it.

Power up the unit outside of the system and run it for a few hours. If you hear the pump running, water moving, and the fans are spinning then you should be good to go. Also no leaks of course.

The gigabit speeds that your ISP says you are getting is always a best case scenario, but when a lot of people in your neighbourhood are using the internet all at the same time your speeds will slow. Also moving a file from computer A to computer B is within your home network. Home networks will run at full gigabit speed as long as all components are gigabit capable.

There's never no chance of the cooler having an issue, but if it arrives broken you can always send it back and have it replaced. Usually without cost.

I would move all the files except the os and programs off of the harddrive, then clone the drive using software onto the ssd. After that you can move the files back onto the HDD. Also make sure that your laptop is set to boot from the ssd.

SSD to SSD will be the fastest, but it also depends on your interface.

Using a cloning software would be a better way to do it.

@Kjennings92 Do you really need the extra speed? if not then you should use an m.2 ssd. it clears up a PCI slot that you could use for other cards. Also m.2 is usually cheaper.

It might be a dead USB port/controller.

What shows up when you attempt to mount the disk?

An adapter will force you to run at USB speeds, however, in day to day use you shouldn't be able to notice a real decrease in speed unless you are using it heavily.

If the drive letters do not change then the programs on the original hard drive should still run correctly. If not, try uninstalling then reinstalling onto the hard drive.

These are pretty good, https://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEWLY-Transparent-2-5-inch-USB-3-0-External-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-Case-SATA-HDD/201689590199?hash=item2ef5a2e9b7:m:mF54YW_LLffkS-6czJY3D_w

Reinstalling would be simpler since there are so many files to move back and forth.