Few years ago I swapped out a platter hard drive for a ssd from crucial. I won't say that it didn't last long, but the life expectancy was much shorter than anticipated. It was easy enough, and they sell a cloning kit for like $15 that copies everything, and there was no windows activation needed. (Oddly, I could never get web root to work on it again.)

A cheap alternative would be just getting a low profile usb flash drive Amazon has them on sale for a reasonable amount for the size.