Lenovo Ideapad 320 Upgrade

I decided to purchase a new laptop after Christmas. I got a Lenovo Ideapad 320 which had a reasonable spec for the cost Intel Core i5, 8GB ram & 128GB SSD, it also came with 1x USB Type-C, 2x USB 3.0, 1x 4-in-1 Card Reader, 1x HDMI, 1x RJ45. This cost me £499 or around $700 I really did not think it was worth the extra for the 520s which had a 256 SSD and some better speakers

 It was a nice light Laptop with 14" LED screen but I soon found out that 128SSD hard drive was not going to cut it. First of all when you check the memory you find there is 40gb taken up by all the software and when I put on my music I lost another 50gb, that did not leave a lot to use especially as I take a lot of photos and there is 32gb on my cameras. I would soon loose out on memory. Your only answer is to use a back up drive. I also looked into cloning a new bigger SSD drive but that looked a little complicated. Then I found a YouTube video showing how to used the Optical drive port.

 My Laptop had a place for a Optical drive but in the effort of keeping the cost down it was not used

 So I flipped it over to find where the screw holding in the drive was 

 and took it out

 You need to put you finger nails in the small gap and the tray will come out

Leaving you with this plastic tray

This is what I am replacing it with, it comes with screwdriver & screws. I bought this off Amazon

Along with the 1TB HD I am adding

Which just slots in, you will need  to take the grey space out you see at the bottom first and put it to one side, then replace the grey spacer at the back once you have slotted the drive in place.

The screws go in the side to stop the drive flopping about

Once your happy you just slide the caddy back in carefully feeling for the connector to engage inside the laptop. Now you turn it on and check to see if you can find the drive if it is not showing then you need to go into the device manager  and add the portion and the location which in my case shows as the D drive.  I now use that drive for all my photos and music plus any other large files. The SSD drive is used as the boot drive and running the laptop. Hope this has been of use gives you the encouragement to do something like this because if I can do it then there is no reason you can't.