How do I know if an SSD is compatible with my laptop?

Yep, my thoughts exactly. No harm will come out of testing/booting your Rescue USB before you actually need it to rescue you.

steve108 said:

Yep, my thoughts exactly. No harm will come out of testing/booting your Rescue USB before you actually need it to rescue you.

All done!
I bought a Crucial 500GB SSD, got it installed yesterday (took me 45 minutes), and used my backup to get it all up and running. One thing different is the silence. I used to hear my HDD disk spinning and making little clicking sounds as it did its job. But now there's no so much as a peep from that area of my laptop.

steve108 said:

And have you'll notice a speed difference in booting time, loading large apps, Windows Updates, antivirus scans, etc.

I think there's a slight difference in loading times. I only did one start up from being shut down so far, and that seemed to be shorter.
The process took me longer than the 6 minute video showed because I first put the drive into the bracket upside down. Also had a hard time unplugging that ribbon cable from the old HDD. Then getting the back cover back onto the laptop was a problem. Hopefully I won't have to mess around with all that again soon!

Well done

steve108 said:

Been there, done that bracket upside down thing, etc .... Yeah, I don't look forward to going into another laptop anytime soon either.

Now I just did an update from 21H1 to H2. Windows updates usually take around 15 or 20 minutes for me, especially when going to a new version. I think it took maybe 5 minutes from shutdown to fully ready to go again. Whooooosh!!!

Now I know what you guys meant when you said things would be so much faster.