Not Sure How to Go About Putting an OS On My New SSD

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aaronchristopher98

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Mar 3, 2014
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Hello.

Recently, I purchased a 128GB Seagate SSD, because (like pretty much everyone else) I want full PC boots in under 15 seconds.

I have my OS installed on my main 1TB HDD, and it has about 850/1000GB used up. I wanted to know if I could move my OS exclusively over to my SSD without moving my massive amounts of files, music, games, and videos along with it. From what I've seen, it looks like there is only drive cloning software that copies your entire drive to another. This doesn't really work out for me, considering that my OS only has 128GB of storage. All that I really want on my SSD is my OS and a couple of programs, but I'm not sure if it is possible to move those exclusively. Help?

Also, I do have a disk of my current OS (Windows 8.1) lying around somewhere, so if I need to install my OS to the SSD and leave the hard drive alone, I can do that. That brings about another question. If installing the OS again is the route I must take, and I set the boot drive to the SSD, will the OS files on the HDD (which will be acting as a storage drive, not a boot drive) interfere with the OS files on the SSD (the boot drive)?

Thank you.
 
Solution
popatim
The best option is to install windows fresh to the new SSD with all the other drives disconnected (obviously not your optical drive if that what you use to install with)

Your other option is a pay for program called Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD. Its 20-25 bucks and can move just your os to an ssd. It does not work in ALL cases so be sure to have made a recent backup of your drive first if you are going to try this.
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Vosgy

Vosgy

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Nov 24, 2014
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If you end up with and OS on each they will not interfere with each other. When you boot of the SSD the OS will only look for OS files from the drive it is installed on, it won't go looking on other drives. As for creating Ghosts/Clones I have only heard of doing the whole drive, if you get some external storage or more internal storage you could move files until it is small enough to Ghost/Clone.
 
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mbreslin1954

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In order to get the OS to boot off the new SSD, you will have to install the OS from scratch on the SSD. After the OS is fully patched, then install whatever programs you want that you have room for on the SSD. I would leave 25% of the SSD free so it works well, and to leave room for future OS patches.

Ideally you should back up your data from your HDD, format the HDD, then copy the data files back to the HDD. Then install any software that won't fit on the SSD onto the newly re-formatted HDD. That is the cleanest way. Otherwise you will have a mish-mash on the HDD consisting of an old Windows install along with old software installs and new software installs. It will be a mess.

If you don't have a spare HDD to backup your current boot HDD, then an alternative, after installing Windows on the SSD, would be to remove the old Windows folder, the old "Program Files (x86)" folder, the old "Program Files" and the old "Program Data" folders, and any other folders not storing your current data.
 
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aaronchristopher98

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Ok so I do have a 1TB external hard drive that is backing up everything that I have on my HDD with my OS. But I'm not really sure how that will solve the issue of a messy two Operating Systems. Should I just delete the windows files anyway? I'm not sure what you meant.
 
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popatim

popatim

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The best option is to install windows fresh to the new SSD with all the other drives disconnected (obviously not your optical drive if that what you use to install with)

Your other option is a pay for program called Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD. Its 20-25 bucks and can move just your os to an ssd. It does not work in ALL cases so be sure to have made a recent backup of your drive first if you are going to try this.
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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personally i'd use EaseUS Todo Backup, they offer a free version and i've been using it since 2008, and never had a failure whenever i needed to clone the backup back to the OS drive. But, i'm assuming you have your OS and programs on the "C" partition

then as far as which drive the computer will boot from, it'll be the one you tell it to in BIOS - you haven't stated your system, but in your BIOS you set your "boot priority" - usually the dvd tray is set first, in case you have to use a repair disk, then you'd set your SSD drive as the 2nd device for the system to look to for the OS. If there's no DVD in the DVD drive, it'll go right past it to the SSD

easy peasy
 
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aaronchristopher98

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I'm wanting to use Paragon's. Will I have to reinstall all downloaded programs if that is the route I take?
 
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popatim

popatim

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If it works then no you wont. The OS gets moved and your other program stay on the hdd and work exactly as before.

again, I do recommend doing a full backup or image of the drive before you try. If it messes up and you dont have it then theres no going back and you will have to reinstall everything from scratch.

if it messes up and you have it, then you just have to restore it and figure out what went wrong and try again.
 
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