We still have laptops and desktops on a mechanical disk, IT says 'buy new' but budget is tight.

An SSD upgrade lifts most 5-year-old workstations back to 'fine for office work'. For other complaints it solves nothing, so check the bottleneck first.

Try this first

1. 1Open Resource Monitor or Activity Monitor and watch the Disk tab during a typical session (Outlook, browser, Teams). If disk queue length stays over 1 or active time over 100 percent, the disk is the bottleneck.
2. 2Check RAM at the same time: under 8 GB with a browser-heavy workload pushes swapping and gives the same feel. SSD doesn't fix that.
3. 3On a SATA laptop with SATA SSD expect 3 to 5x faster boot and app launch, less difference for CPU-heavy work (Excel recalc, video transcoding).
4. 4For an NVMe laptop with old NVMe SSD: measure with CrystalDiskMark first. Not every new SSD is faster than the old. PCIe Gen3 vs Gen4 is not noticeable for office work.
5. 5Plan the migration: clone with Macrium Reflect Free or Clonezilla, don't copy by hand. Keep the old disk 30 days in case rollback is needed.
6. 6Do the honest math: new NVMe (1 TB) plus 2 hours labour vs a new business laptop. For devices older than 6 years or with other issues (keyboard, hinge, battery), replacement often pays better.

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