I finally got a new hard drive, but I under estimated how long it would take to reinstall all my programs and environments for development...

That's why when I got my hands on my new SSD I immediately installed it... Cause I knew if I started to think about the stuff I had to do after the swap, I'd probably never do it 😅

I keep all my development stuff in VM's that way I can change hardware at will

changed 4 drives on my pc (500 GB HD -> Samsung 830 128 GB -> crucial mx500 256 GB -> Samsung 850 evo 500GB) always went with shrinking the old partition and dd'ing it
in the new drive. it took about an hour each time and never ever reinstalled anything.