Moving windows 7 from HDD to SSD

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scarab123321

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Dec 13, 2012
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I have a 2 TB hard drive thats monstly full, only maybe 500-600 GB free, but im considering getting an ssd for the operating system and things like chrome, but considering ive got more than a TB of data that i want intact on the hard drive, mostly games, how would i move just the OS from the HDD to the SSD without deleting anything or having to reinstall anything?
 
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RealBeast
You could go through a convoluted and dangerous process of creating a new partition and then moving as much data as you can, expanding the data partition and move more, then clone the OS partition when it gets small enough. The odds are that you will have problems and lose everything though.

You should do a clean install of Windows 7 and reinstall your programs with the HDD disconnected and the bios in AHCI mode as 2x4b suggests. It will work and be far safer for your data.
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2x4b

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Oct 28, 2013
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You can't really 'move' the OS to a new drive.
A better strategy would be to re-install the OS on the new drive, and use the old drive as a data drive. This would also involve re-installing everything. Troublesome and time consuming, but guaranteed to work.
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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Sep 13, 2010
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You could go through a convoluted and dangerous process of creating a new partition and then moving as much data as you can, expanding the data partition and move more, then clone the OS partition when it gets small enough. The odds are that you will have problems and lose everything though.

You should do a clean install of Windows 7 and reinstall your programs with the HDD disconnected and the bios in AHCI mode as 2x4b suggests. It will work and be far safer for your data.
 
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Solution
RealBeast

RealBeast

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You can leave the OS on the HDD but it will do no good as far as the programs since the registry of the current boot partition must contain the program registry keys to work.

I usually leave Windows on the old drive (but install with the HDD disconnected) to be able to move any user files, favorites, etc. and then I eventually delete the old Windows folder when I am happy with the new install to reclaim the space.
 
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scarab123321

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Dec 13, 2012
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So my steam games for instance, would I have to download then again completely? Their information would still be on the hard drive when it was the disk with the os, just the is would be on a 64/128 GB ssd
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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No STEAM is a special case among programs. You can just reload the STEAM app and have the game file on another folder and link to it -- READ THIS and you will understand how to use your current game folder on a different drive so you do not have to download the massive amounts of game files again.
 
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scarab123321

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Dec 13, 2012
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Ok thanks, that's not bad at all then lol another quick thing, do you think I should go for the $69.99 kingston ssd on newegg, or the $70 samsung 840 evo on rakuten, both 120GB, or should I wait for cyber Monday?
 
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