How do I move my files to a new laptop drive? Does WD support this?

My apologies if this topic has been beaten to death and I missed things in my searches on this site.

I need to replace hard drives in my sisters and my HP laptop computers. I have WD 1TB Blacks in my shopping cart but, my searching on the “error’net” gave me so much conflicting information I’m a bit confused. My laptop drive is just plain slow and her laptop has some other issue which is causing a huge amount of thrashing (plenty of free space and it has been ‘optimized’). Both are older laptops so, a HD upgrade seems appropriate.

Do I need to buy a USB based external enclosure to mirror the boot drive into the new hard drive?

Will this work: Software and Firmware Downloads | WD Support
Or, do I need to spend more money than I pay buying the hard drive to get a piece of software that will copy the MBR and all info to the new hard drive?

TIA!

Try the FREE Macrium Reflect. You can find it here> Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free Trial just click on the Home Use button and entering an email is optional so you can just click through and still download and install it. It’s great for cloning or for backup images! It will copy everything on your old drive to your new drive.

Instead of those WD Black drives you might switch to WD Blue 2.5 SSDs. From power off to desktop in about 20 seconds! I have one in an old Toshiba laptop and it’s great!

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Thank you flhthemi!