Most seemless way to transition to SDD?

[Corporate Thug]

So I have a 1TB mechanical drive w/ my OS and all files. I just bought a 120gb SSD. What is the best/easiest way to get my OS on the SDD and keep my files (music, pics, etc.) on the harddrive?

I assume I can do a clean install of the OS on the SSD but would that prevent me from accessing files on the mechanical drive since there are "two" OS on two drives?

 

[ManBearPig]

I had this question too. As best as I can understand, you'll (unfortunately) have to install the OS on the SSD, transfer the files you want from the old drive to another drive, wipe the drive, set it up as a storage drive, then transfer the files back lol.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Clone using ghost or similar. Once the disks are cloned, switch to booting from the SSD, delete everything except your data from the mechanical drive.

 

[piasabird]

Generally in the BIOS you set up the default drive to boot from. I think that can be changed with a Repair Install Technique. What it does is it changes the FAT Table to make a second drive part of the extended partition. Dont know if they stall call it a FAT table if it is actually NTFS, but it is the same basic idea. Usually in the install process your get some kind of option.

Be careful and dont destroy your files. Once you do it is too late.

With Microsoft and how it uses OS user profiles it may be hard to access your files in MY Documents because it is base on being that users and logging onto that OS. There are probably ways to share MY Documents or to use a different folder for the default document folder for all users.

 

[piasabird]

There are probably different ways to do this. The best way is to back up your drive if you can.

 

[Belegost]

So because the current drive is so large, and you don't mention a separate OS partition, it doesn't seem like a disk image is an option here. I recommend dual-booting, setting up the new environment, and then removing the old windows.

So install the SSD with your current drive in place, boot to the windows install disk, and choose to install windows on the SSD. You can read this for help. This will give you a boot-time option between the two installs.

Later the boot.ini can be modified to remove the old windows option.

The only possible downside to this is using the same product key for both windows, however as long as you work within the short trial period, just don't put a key on the new install, then when you're ready, deactivate the old windows, and activate the new one.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

So because the current drive is so large, and you don't mention a separate OS partition, it doesn't seem like a disk image is an option here. I recommend dual-booting, setting up the new environment, and then removing the old windows.

So install the SSD with your current drive in place, boot to the windows install disk, and choose to install windows on the SSD. You can read this for help. This will give you a boot-time option between the two installs.

Later the boot.ini can be modified to remove the old windows option.

The only possible downside to this is using the same product key for both windows, however as long as you work within the short trial period, just don't put a key on the new install, then when you're ready, deactivate the old windows, and activate the new one.

It really depends on how much data he has stored.

 

[Corporate Thug]

It really depends on how much data he has stored.

500gb+

 

[Corporate Thug]

So because the current drive is so large, and you don't mention a separate OS partition, it doesn't seem like a disk image is an option here. I recommend dual-booting, setting up the new environment, and then removing the old windows.

So install the SSD with your current drive in place, boot to the windows install disk, and choose to install windows on the SSD. You can read this for help. This will give you a boot-time option between the two installs.

Later the boot.ini can be modified to remove the old windows option.

The only possible downside to this is using the same product key for both windows, however as long as you work within the short trial period, just don't put a key on the new install, then when you're ready, deactivate the old windows, and activate the new one.

Thanks, can you relink the first link?

 

[MrTeal]

If you really want to keep your current install of Windows, here's what I'd do.

Option 1) Take all your music, pics, movies, etc and move them onto another hard drive. If you don't have one, see if you can borrow one from a friend. Delete from the main hard drive, and then migrate over to the SSD using something like Acronis.

Option 2) If you're really close to 500GB, say less than 600GB, you might be able to shrink the volume down to 600GB, create a new partition with the free space, and move over files that way. System files can screw with that if they're in the wrong place on the hard drive though. You can disable hibernation and the page file during the move to remove some of the extra disk space and make it possible to shrink the volume down.

 

[Belegost]

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Install-more-than-one-operating-system-multiboot

 

[jdjbuffalo]

I'm actually doing something similar and I found a program that should do what you want.

For me, I'm moving from a 250GB drive to an SSD in my HTPC. I've spent a lot of time configuring and fine tuning it and I really don't want to reinstall.

The program is called EZ Gig IV Cloning Software and is available here:
http://www.apricorn.com/products/software/ezgig.html

Note: I haven't actually tried it yet but it looks solid and is included with many SSD kits I've seen.

Like the others have said, you'll need to make sure to move all your big stuff, like movies, music, documents to another hard drive. You need to make sure you can fit all the files onto your SSD, with room to spare. You want to always have at least 10% of the drive free to keep it running at it's best speeds.

 

[mfenn]

You don't want to use a cloning tool to migrate from an HDD to SSD because it won't get the partition alignment right. A misaligned partition will lower you SSD performance significantly.

What you want to do is.
1. Disconnect the old HDD
2. Connect the SSD
3. Install Windows on the SSD. The point of disconnecting the old HDD is to force the Windows installer to write a new bootloader instead of reusing the one on your HDD
4. Reconnect the HDD, making sure to set the BIOS boot order such that the SSD is first.
5. Boot Windows, your HDD will now be the D drive (or E, F, whatever). Once you are confident that you've migrated all your data, you can safely delete the old Windows folder.

 

[weeber]

I went through the same thing a couple of weeks ago; though I didn't have as much data as you. Mfenn is correct, you have to be careful about cloning the disk because the alignment will be off, which will seriously hamper SSD performance. Some tools can compensate for this, I used True Image 2011, which will correct the alignment if you restore from an image (but won't work if you use the cloning tool). Below are the steps I did, but I had several old hard drives I could temporarily backup data to, ymmv:

1. Used True Image to make one complete backup image on a spare HD, just in case things went horribly wrong - I could start completely over like nothing happened
2. Move data files (documents, pictures, videos, etc.) to a spare HD so I can copy over later
3. Cleaned up my OS by uninstalling programs I don't use anymore, clearing out temp files, disabled hibernation (the hiberfil.sys can be several gig, and you don't really need it in a desktop with an SSD). After moving my data files off the drive and cleaning up the HD, the total data size was ~65GB, plenty for the 120GB drive.
4. Made a disk image of my new "lean and mean" OS.
5. Shut down computer, and installed SSD in place of HDD.
6. Booted using the True Image boot CD and restored the "lean and mean" image to the SSD. True Image recognized the SSD and automatically used the correct settings for partition alignment, but I double-checked everything.
7. Booted into Windows on the SSD, once I made sure everything was working, I plugged in the old HDD as a secondary drive, formatted it, and moved my data files over to it. I then linked the "My documents", "My Videos", "My Pictures" folders in Windows to the appropriate folders on the secondary drive.

That was it, my computer was up an running. It ended up being a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. One last thing to double-check, you need to make sure that AHCI is enabled on your system and Windows is setup to use it. If AHCI was enabled during your Windows install (mine was), you're good to go. If not, there a registry hack you have to do to get it to work.