So to that end I would like to replace the (I am guessing) 5400 RPM HDD with a SSD and watch it speed up considerably. I don't know where to start with this.

There are few ways to make a laptop faster that are as easy and cost-effective as replacing your existing hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD).

Are you still looking for a safe and reliable clone HDD to SSD freeware? Windows doesn’t offer a built-in free SSD cloning tool to migrate a hard disk to another drive.

Learn how to install Windows on SSD and everything else on HDD to optimize performance and storage capacity of your PC.