Solved! Have read so many different resources, I'm unsure if my upgrade plan is possible...

[mwcdex]

I have a laptop Dell Inspiron 15-3552, which I would like to upgrade by using the available optical drive. Does my DIY plan to upgrade seem plausible?

1. Clean up and back-up my system.
2. Attach SSD to USB-to-SATA cable.
3. Clone entirety of HDD to SSD.

So what I've read is that the SSD can be replaced in the same position where the current HDD is in the system OR I've read that I could install the SSD into the optical drive using an optical bay caddy. Where I'm confused is how to get my computer to recognize the optical drive as the boot drive. Is it as simple as just pressing F2 upon rebooting the system and magically the BIOS menu should have an option to boot the OS found on the SSD in the optical drive? Thanks in advance for any additional insight you can provide!

 

[geofelt]

I have done this on a number of laptops.
My plan would be to buy a Samsung EVO of sufficient size to hold the used contents of your HDD.
I think your laptop uses a 2.5" standard sata drive so a 860 evo would be fine. (verify that)
Use a usb to sata cable and use the Samsung ssd migration app to move your C drive to the new ssd.
Then simply remove the old HDD and replace it with the new ssd.
The HDD will remain unchanged and can be used as a known good backup if you ever need to go back or if anything goes wrong.
I suppose a backup could also be done, but it hardly seems necessary.

A ssd will transform the performance of your laptop.