Storage upgrading help

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MajoritySnake22

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Hey guys, I currently have a 1Tb WD Blue that has everything on it, But I'm trying to upgrade to a 2 TB WD Black for storage, and a Samsung 850 Pro 256 GB Boot drive and other daily programs. I have a fresh version of Windows 8.1 on my Boot drive and unplugged it to get all my data from my 1Tb to my 2Tb I cloned the data from my 1Tb to my 2Tb with Macrium Reflect and it had 1 TB of Unallocated space which I could not merge to make Windows take up the whole space so I cleared the 2Tb drive. So now I sit here with a empty E: drive and was thinking about copying all the files from C: to E: but then there are a few files like Windows and $Windows.~BT that I don't think are suppose to be on the storage drive and then there are a few Partitions that are on my C: Drive like System and a Recovery Partition that I don't know if I need them on the new drive or how to make them on the new drive. So basically to sum it all up I really have no idea what I'm doing and wondering if you all would help me. If you need anymore information don't hesitate to ask. Thanks!
 
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So you have a fresh 8.1 install on the SSD yes? Or not? Because that's step 1. Install fresh OS on SSD. I wouldn't waste time with cloning. Any programs you had installed will need to be re-downloaded and installed again anyway. There's a workaround for Steam and Origin games if you'd rather not re-download them, but otherwise programs will need to be reinstalled.

Once that's done, just put both your 1TB & 2TB Drives in the system. If you want to stop using the 1TB Drive, just copy anything off it that you want either to your system drive (the SSD) or your WD Black HDD. Don't copy everything, just the Documents, Music, etc that you want.

Once you're confident you've got everything you can take the 1TB out and you're all done.
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rhysiam

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So you have a fresh 8.1 install on the SSD yes? Or not? Because that's step 1. Install fresh OS on SSD. I wouldn't waste time with cloning. Any programs you had installed will need to be re-downloaded and installed again anyway. There's a workaround for Steam and Origin games if you'd rather not re-download them, but otherwise programs will need to be reinstalled.

Once that's done, just put both your 1TB & 2TB Drives in the system. If you want to stop using the 1TB Drive, just copy anything off it that you want either to your system drive (the SSD) or your WD Black HDD. Don't copy everything, just the Documents, Music, etc that you want.

Once you're confident you've got everything you can take the 1TB out and you're all done.
 
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BigBadBeef

BigBadBeef

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If you were actually saying these things instead of writing them down, this is how you would look like on camera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySlibLnATqw
Terrible text organizational skills!

Now lets get to work:

The official procedure for transferring an operating system and its data is NOT copy-paste. You use a HDD cloning tool. After you've done that, you will have a partiton of 1TB on your second drive, and another 1TB of unallocated space. You can either use the control panel and create a new partition with the remaining drive data OR you expand the existing partition into the empty space which will include the entire hard disk space.

How to do any of these things you can check on Google. All questions you posed have already been answered. There are extensive tutorials on how all this is done.

HOWEVER...

It is my personal opinion that you have made such as mess of this thing that the breakdown of your operating system is almost imminent. I recommend you transfer all important data to a portable drive, format everything and install the latest version of windows...
 
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Shaun o

Shaun o

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If you clone the whole of a 1Tb drive it will copy all of the data on the drive and retain the physical drive size or partition as well.
This will happen if you never formatted the 2TB drive, and just cloned the 1Tb drive then layed the image down to the 2Tb drive.

Any file that exists with windows. old or $windows will or maybe a old installation of windows were you re installed windows on the same drive as the existing os without formatting the drive to do a clean installation of windows.

A system partition is always created by windows when you install it, as a temporary space where it stores all of the files that it uncompressed from the windows installation disk and should be about 100Mb in size.
As for the rest of your data if it`s save files and other things then simply copy it from the 1Tb drive to the 2Tb drive.
The only other way if you cloned the drive is to use Disk manager.
You lay down the cloned image of the 1Tb drive to the 2Tb drive.

And then.
In the search box of windows type: Disk man

Format and create partitions.

You may find that due to the clone that you have two partitions on the drive.
So would have to format the second partition if it was created.
Or you have the option to re allocate the space to the main partition to make it 2Tb in size again.
 
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MajoritySnake22

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Yes I did install a fresh version of windows on the SSD. I would like to keep all my Steam and Origin games as I have quite a bit downloaded and pretty crap internet. But I will do thanks for the help!

 
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MajoritySnake22

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Alright then now that you have made me a bit self-conscious...

I used a HDD cloning tool and everything went smooth but there was the unallocated space and no mater what I couldn't Reallocate it with its lost 1Tb brother. (Couldn't merge the 2)
 
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MajoritySnake22

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Okay so formatting a drive is when you give it a letter right? Yet I don't know I might have done something wrong when cloning and mess up the Unallocated part so I couldn't merge the two, but I could format it to like F: but I really just wanted it all to be in the same drive.
 
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MajoritySnake22

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Thanks for the link! Might go your way as for I don't think I really need to clone it because I already have windows installed on the SSD. Thank you for the help!
 
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rhysiam

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You don't want to clone because that will copy over the old Operating System and programs, which you don't need and can't use because they'll need to be reinstalled fresh on the SSD anyway.

Shaun O makes a good point that you probably now have multiple partitions on your 2TB drive. So BEFORE you start using it for you Steam games and to copy files to, it's a good idea to remove all the partitions and start again (that will wipe any and all data from the drive so make sure you have everything you want to keep on your previous 1TB drive before you do this).

There's a bunch of youtube tutorials and the like on how to do this so Google it and post back if you get stuck. Just be careful and make sure you're deleting the partitions from the drive you don't need - because the last thing you want to do is blow away a partition with your OS or important data on it.
 
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MajoritySnake22

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Yeah that's what I was thinking, and I only have multiple partitions on the 1Tb the 2Tb is just a E: drive with 1.81 TB free. But I do see where that would conflict with everything.
 
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rhysiam

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Good - that's exactly what you want, a single partition as your "E" drive with the entire drive space available on it. Don't worry about the multiple partitions on the 1TB drive, because you'll only be manually copying over the documents and music you need anyway.
 
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MajoritySnake22

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I have one more question on the new "E" drive how should I go about making the files? Should I just like create a new file and name it like Program Files or should I like download and install something on the new drive so that it manually makes the file? (If it even manually makes it.)
 
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rhysiam

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You can organise them however it makes logical sense to you.

I'm still stuck on a 120GB SSD and some programs don't fit and need to be installed on my HDD (F Drive for me). I made a "Program Files" folder on my F drive and installed them there.; I made a subfolder under Program Files called Games and put some there. If I didn't have a NAS I might have folders for my video and music libraries under separate folders at the top level too.

It doesn't really matter as long as it makes logical sense and results is a well organised file structure.
 
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MajoritySnake22

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Ah okay I just didn't know that if the Program Files and other important files had something hidden in them that made them a bit special. Thanks!
 
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