Upgrading to SSD, Help appreciated

jyanez16

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Jun 28, 2011
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Hi guys, I really need help. First of all, a bit of background. I built the PC myself and it currently has a 1 TB Caviar Black HDD. Recently, windows started telling me to backup my stuff because their were issues with the drive. I have Windows 8 right now, so I did a refresh, but now the computer freezes randomly every hour or so. I ran the defragger and tells me it's 20% fragmented but when I try to optimize it'll just freeze and/or won't do anything at all for hours.

So my guess is that the HDD is indeed the problem. For that reason I'd like to upgrade to an SSD and re install Windows there; however, I have quite a few questions. I originally bought Windows 7 and installed that, but upgraded to Windows 8 through their upgrade assistant.

My question is, how would I go about switching Windows 8 to the SSD? I'd like to keep the old HDD for storage only, is that possible? Any help would be appreciated, I'm pretty worried right now.
 
First, I need to ask why you'd trust the HDD as a storage disk?

You could clone the current HDD to the SSD then reformat the HDD and use for data, but there's something wrong with the disk, correct?

If you want to go to an SSD, first, you'd need to make sure the contents of your drive can fit on the new SSD. You can't really just selectively move just the OS to the SSD. You can clone the disk, though.

The easiest way is to get an SSD that comes with a transfer kit (USB to SATA and cloning software) or you can pick up an Apricorn Clone kit for $17 on Amazon.
 

jyanez16

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Jun 28, 2011
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You're right. In that case, say that instead of going with an SSD, I go ahead a buy a new 1TB HDD. If I were to do that, would I just need to clone it as well? (Does cloning require the product key or something?)

 


Yes. That would work, too. You could use the same kit. If your old disk issue isn't causing data corruption, you'll be just fine. The clone creates an exact copy of the data on your old drive. You won't have to re-enter any product keys/codes.