General Help When Installing An SSD

ThePcNewbie123

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Nov 30, 2015
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Hello, I'm about to run out of storage on my HDD (Like 20 Gb free of like 1TB lmao), and am planning on getting a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD. Now, all I am wondering is, when installing it on my XPS 8700, can I keep all my info on my HDD (Not planning on removing it), and just install programs such as Windows on my SSD or other hefty games? What would I need in order to complete that? (Sorry, 1st time doing something storage related, and I heard stuff about people getting all there information removed when installing Windows or something like that, so I want to be extra careful)

Or would you recommend an HDD (I heard about the SSD and its fast speed and such, and I don't do much storage consuming stuff). I also had that HDD for like 3 years, so I filled it up gradually.
 
Solution
First...what OS is this and where did it come from?
Win 8 then Upgraded to 10? No problem.

But...Installing the OS, on a new drive, in the same system...does not require a new OS license.

Your 'data'?
Well...you have to determine what is 'data'.
Your personal files...doc/music/video...no problem.
Any application installs? They will need to be reinstalled. The new OS on the new drive will know nothing about them.

USAFRet

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You really need to install the OS on the SSD, along with your applications.
Much, much faster that way.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Basically, yes.
You are starting from a clean slate.
OS, drivers, applications....games as fits.
 

ThePcNewbie123

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Hmmm, for now, now that I am thinking and researching about it a bit more then last time, can I just keep all my data on my HDD and just have the SSD as a new storage drive? Wouldn't reinstalling Windows as a whole mean that I would have all my data removed and have to buy a new Windows activation key? (I did the free upgrade from Windows 8 to 10). I also haven't backed up any data yet so far, and would probably want to consider that. I guess I would just set my SSD as my boot drive for now, and think about this all later? What would you say? I want to have everything on my HDD, but however have Windows on my SSD so everything loads faster, but I am afraid of either getting removed data, but then again im afraid of cloning something which will take up all my SSD's space.

Sorry if this is getting frustrating and I'm not getting it, I just want to be clear as possible so I know what I'm doing and don't screw anything up.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
First...what OS is this and where did it come from?
Win 8 then Upgraded to 10? No problem.

But...Installing the OS, on a new drive, in the same system...does not require a new OS license.

Your 'data'?
Well...you have to determine what is 'data'.
Your personal files...doc/music/video...no problem.
Any application installs? They will need to be reinstalled. The new OS on the new drive will know nothing about them.
 
Solution

ThePcNewbie123

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Nov 30, 2015
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Oh alright thanks for that, my OS is I guess Windows 10, but was originally 8 on the system when I first go it.