Easier way to swap laptop hard drives?

[robbl]

Recently I purchased a new SSD to replace my slowing HDD. Right now, I have a fresh install of Windows 8.1 on the SSD and just swap back in the HDD (also Windows 8.1) to my laptop whenever I want to run some of the programs which were immovable from the HDD (long story). Anyway, it's a pain to have to unscrew everything in the laptop whenever I want to swap between the SSD and the HDD and so I was wondering if there was an easier way to swap out the drives (maybe some sort of enclosure setup. I just don't want to clone the HDD to the SSD because I like having the fresh start up whenever I want). Any ideas?

 

[reedo_43]

There is not unless your laptop allows for a internal hard drive enclosure.(several do but not many) An external enclosure will not work. Sorry...

 

[boosted1g]

For some laptops this will work and for others it wont, it all depends on the bios abilities:

You can get a hard drive caddy that fits into your DVD drive bay (make sure you get the right height as there is 9 and 12mm sizes). Once installed you could then dual boot the computer.



One other option if you have a half decent laptop (performance wise) is to do the dvd drive setup I mentioned above (or have drive as an external) and run a virtual machine of the old HDD os.