So, long story short I work for a government entity and our IT overlords give us decent PC's but they are overloaded with a bunch of garbage for security that I can't do anything about.

Result is excruciatingly slow performance. (20 seconds to open a pdf, 30 seconds to get a right-click menu on file etc)

System performance tab shows 100% hard drive in use frequently.

I'm wondering - would they be able to tell if I cloned my 1 TB hard drive to a 1 TB SDD to speed up access times and hopefully improve performance issues?

It would look the same software wise I think, (correct me if I'm wrong) but could they tell if the hardware changed?

short answer is yes if they are monitoring for shit like that.

The smart move would be to get permission to do that. If you want to keep your job and avoid prison, that is.

Yes they would be able to see

There's no such thing as permission to do that.

Ordering the slightest thing is a massive contractual rigmorole.

I added extra RAM once and nobody said anything. Would "they be able to see" that? If so, they didn't care when I did that.

Might be a different story with a hard drive though.

However, I could claim ignorance and say I was backing up the hard drive

Ignorantia juris non excusat

If it's related to your job like IT, information security ect maybe. But if you're An accountant no way.

oro differre

While I'm sure you have no intention of selling the old hard drive (with the data still on it), govt. entities still tend to frown on employees "copying" their drives.

replace hard drives move data, only option.