Can I have an HDD and SSD together on one pc?

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killerperson

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I have a pc with a 1tb HDD and am thinking about getting an SDD with it as well. Will it work? Would it be better to have the HDD as main storage and SDD for things such as gaming?
 
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Silverbear
Yes, you can put as many drives in your computer as your motherboard will allow. SSD for OS, Video/Photo Editing. HDD for storage and games. Games do load faster on an SSD of course, but you don't really get a big boost in performance.
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Silverbear

Silverbear

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Yes, you can put as many drives in your computer as your motherboard will allow. SSD for OS, Video/Photo Editing. HDD for storage and games. Games do load faster on an SSD of course, but you don't really get a big boost in performance.
 
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killerperson

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But would it be a pain the butt to switch my os to the ssd?
 
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Silverbear

Silverbear

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Sometimes, but the OS is tied to the motherboard so you don't have to worry about buying a new copy or activation issues. I think it's worth it, if you have Windows 8.1 the boot time is lightning fast and applications are so much faster.
 
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killerperson

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Thanks! Is there any tutorials on how to switch over the OS to the other storage device?
 
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ArtPog

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I may be wrong but what I think you're asking is whether you can "migrate" (clone) the contents of your 1 TB HDD (which contains your OS) over to a SSD so that the SSD can become your new boot drive. Is that your question?
 
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killerperson

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Yes I would want my SSD to be my new boot drive. sorry for the late reply
 
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ArtPog

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Although we all have different PC needs most users purchasing a SSD plan to use the SSD as their boot drive because of that drive's substantially greater speed than a HDD. So in addition to the SSD containing the OS the user will install whatever number of frequently used programs that can "fit" on the SSD, e.g., a word processing program, perhaps a photo editing program, personal data that's frequently accessed, and the like.

I'm not a gamer but from what my gaming friends tell me the SSD is not particularly useful where games are involved except that the SSD can load games quicker than an HDD. Nearly all of my gaming friends tell me that virtually all their games are installed on their secondary HDD. If there's "room" on the SSD they'll install this or that game on that drive.

So the problem is in "migrating" the data from a user's large-capacity disk to a (usually) much smaller SSD. If the disk-space capacity of a SSD is greater than the TOTAL contents of the user's current HDD containing the OS then there's little problem in the "data migration" (disk-cloning) process. It's pretty cut & dried since there are many disk-cloning programs available, many of which are included with a new SSD.

The preceding is just a short summary outlining the process. If you desire more details then provide detailed information re your current system and precise objectives.
 
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PClAus

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You can sometimes migrate the OS, depending on the brand of the SSD you buy.

I know Samsung SSD's come with a program called Data Migration, which allows you to transfer your OS from HDD to SSD without all the other contents of the HDD.

Not so sure about other brands, though, Samsung is the only SSD manufacturer I've bought from.
 
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ArtPog

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While it is true that the Samsung Data Migration program (designed specifically for Samsung SSDs) presumably does have capability of excluding data from the source disk during the disk-cloning process it's not as simple a process as we would like. There's no clear-cut option to instruct the data migration program to, for example, "Transfer only all the files necessary for creating a viable OS on the destination disk." (If only there was such an option!

Virtually all of the users I've spoken to who have tried to use the SDM program for this purpose have pretty much abandoned that process and ultimately fresh-installed the OS onto their new Samsung SSD and then manually reinstalled whatever programs could "fit" on the SSD and manually transferred other data.

I would be interested in learning if you PERSONALLY have been successful in using the SDM program for this specific purpose.
 
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PClAus

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From the samsung SSD white paper:

"The first partition, which generally contains the Windows operating system installation, is added automatically. Users can add an additional partition to the migration by simply clicking on its picture."

So if you have a partition dedicated to the OS files, you can opt to only transfer that partition, and leave the rest on the initial drive.

SDM 2.0 also supports custom cloning, not sure how long ago this was released, but it allows you to select/deselect individual files to be cloned:

"In most cases, PC users use 500GB, 1TB and even more capacity of HDDs while SSD is less than that. If you (...) want to migrate your data from your 1TB HDD(500GB used) to a 250GB SSD, you’ll find that the Target Disk(SSD) is not large enough to accommodate all files on the Source Disk(HDD). “Custom Cloning” feature will help you select unnecessary media files on the Source Disk to exclude from the cloning process."

But you're correct, there is no clear cut option to specifically transfer ONLY the files required for the OS to function, unless you have set up a partition dedicated to that purpose previously.

Would be an extremely useful function to have!
 
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