Everythings on HDD, move OS to SSD

Bray

Honorable
Jul 20, 2013
3
0
10,510
Two weeks ago I got a new Dell XPS 15, with a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. Under Windows 8 this is visible as two different drives, but unfortunatly when the XPS arrived everything, including OS was installed on the HDD. I dont want to use the SSD as a cache, since I will be using RAMdisk and move frequent applications there myself.

How do I even move the OS onto the SSD. Do I backup the PC, and then what, do I copy the OS to the drive? Do I need to use my other PCs/Macs and go into disk utility and paste the OS there? Help is greatly appreciated, Thanks!
 
Solution
Nope, you can't just copy and paste the OS. You need to either do a clean reinstall or use cloning software. There are many that work well -- I use Ghost 15, but Acronis True Image and EaseUS Todo Backup are both excellent also. I usually use Todo where the destination SSD is smaller than the HDD, although you need to get the actual amount of data to clone small enough to fit the SSD. That may mean removing some programs and then reinstalling them onto the HDD once the OS is on the SSD -- you cannot just drag and drop programs around either.

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
Nope, you can't just copy and paste the OS. You need to either do a clean reinstall or use cloning software. There are many that work well -- I use Ghost 15, but Acronis True Image and EaseUS Todo Backup are both excellent also. I usually use Todo where the destination SSD is smaller than the HDD, although you need to get the actual amount of data to clone small enough to fit the SSD. That may mean removing some programs and then reinstalling them onto the HDD once the OS is on the SSD -- you cannot just drag and drop programs around either.
 
Solution

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