Please help 10 year old HDD dying, switching to SDD, want Win 10 on SSD, never installed OS or SSD before.

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scentofwhite

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Aug 24, 2017
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My 10 year old HDD (running windows 7) is dying, it has already caused black screen with white text boot issue, I think its causing my current screen tearing and at times shortcuts are not highlighted when the cursor is over them and clicking on them does nothing. I need to start using my SSD and stop using my current HDD anyway so even if its not causing all of that I need to replace my HDD now and to do that I need to put Windows 10 on my SSD.

I do not trust my current HDD and do not know if using it in the process of putting windows 10 on my SSD could cause issues. Since my HDD is dying and I use my PC everyday this is urgent for me. I do not need to save anything on my HDD.

I have an empty Samsung 850 evo that has been sitting unused in my room for 2 years. I don't have a usb to sata cable.

I have the disk with the SSD, but my disk drive doesn't work. I have a laptop with a working disk drive if absolutely needed.

I do not have windows 10 but I am willing to buy it.

My motherboard is a gigabyte B75M- D3H, which is SATA 3 compatible, I assume my 850 evo uses SATA 3 too, it doesn't say on the box but it says it uses SATA 3 on Samsung's site. I don't think my motherboard has one of those M??? 2.0 ports for an SSD, sorry I can't remember what they are called. But their site says the SATA 3 can deliver 6BGps link speeds.

How should I get Windows 10 and put it on my SSD? Preferably not using a disk drive, a usb to sata connector or my current half broken HDD (if it would jeopardize the quality of the transfer of Win10 to the SSD).

Would I be able to download Samsung's data Migration software.
Download Windows 10 to a USB flash-drive.
Then use the data migration software to install Windows 10 on my empty SSD from my USB flash-drive?

If yes, then should I download the migration software to my flash drive or to my half broken HDD?

I have not installed a SSD or an Operating System before and I am concerned since I use my PC every day and its dying, please help.

I can clarify anything if asked.

Paddy.
 
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CountMike

CountMike

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Oct 31, 2015
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You could buy W10 at a store or online, they come on a USB drive. Just replace your old HDD with the SSD, BOOT from that USB and it will install on your SSD.
To migrate (clone) your HDD you need to connect it somehow (USB to SATA adapter) and use the SW provided with your SSD which you can download from Samsung site. Don't forget to set SATA port to AHCI mode whatever you do. I strongly suggest clean W10 install.
 
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CountMike

CountMike

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Oct 31, 2015
33,775
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147,990
You could buy W10 at a store or online, they come on a USB drive. Just replace your old HDD with the SSD, BOOT from that USB and it will install on your SSD.
To migrate (clone) your HDD you need to connect it somehow (USB to SATA adapter) and use the SW provided with your SSD which you can download from Samsung site. Don't forget to set SATA port to AHCI mode whatever you do. I strongly suggest clean W10 install.
To migrate (clone)drive, your total used space on old HDD would have to be smaller than formatted size of your SSD.
 
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ArtPog

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Sep 17, 2014
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I'm going to mention another set of options I'd like you to consider.

1. The fact that you've been able to apparently obtain a reasonable amount of service from your daily used 10-year-old HDD (at least until recently), while not exactly a miracle, is something of a blessing.

2. Unquestionably, you should install your Samsung SSD as your boot drive regardless of whether the HDD is actually the cause of the problems you're experiencing. Although it's likely the HDD is the culprit causing the problem you describe, it could be caused by various sources, e.g., your graphics card.

3. Be that as it may there's absolutely no sense in that Samsung 850 EVO lying dormant in a box on the shelf.

4. One of the first things you should do while your system is still viable (in that your data can currently be accessed), is to clone the contents of the HDD to another drive. I suppose the problem here is that you do not have another drive to serve as the destination drive for those cloned contents. Of course you do have the SSD - we'll get to that.

5. What are the TOTAL contents of the data presently on the HDD?

6. What is the capacity of your Samsung SSD?

7. If the disk-space capacity of the SSD was sufficient to contain the total contents of the HDD, that would be an option to consider. So first let us know about this and we can go on with some details about this process for you to consider or outright reject.

8. I'm not convinced that AT THIS POINT-IN-TIME you would be better served by "upgrading" to Win 10 given the make/model of your present motherboard. The board, of course, was not designed with Win 10 in mind and that series of ASUS boards (I can't recall specifically if your particular ASUS model was one of them) had (has) exhibited compatibility problems after user-installed Win 10 OSs.

9. Frankly, my inclination at this time would be to stay with the Win 7 OS (using your SSD as the boot drive, of course) and if & when you (hopefully) build (I assume you're the builder) your new Win 10 system, probably the only transferred component will be the SSD.

10. So if the above has any appeal to you, the first thing to determine is whether your SSD could serve as the destination drive for the total contents of your HDD in a disk-cloning operation. (Or, alternatively if (preferably) you had another HDD that could serve as the destination drive).
 
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scentofwhite

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Aug 24, 2017
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Thank you very much for responding. Sorry that I couldn´t reply till now.
If I instal win10 it will be a clean instal on the ssd with the usb.
My concern that is making me hesitate before installing win10 is that I don´t know if it will work with my Gigabyte B75M-D3H motherboard. I would love if I could just instal win10 and know it would work with my mobo but I really don´t want to ruin everything by risking it without knowing it will work. According to Gigabytes support section, windows 10 is not listed as an OS it can support but there are drivers for my mobo and Win 10 >.< http://www.gigabyte.us/Support/FAQ/1681.

I see that there are win 10 drivers for my mobo [R4.31] http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-B75M-D3H-rev-11#support-dl, but I don´t know what driver my mobo is using. I don´t know how to check. In device manager I see a lot of things under system devices, none of them say "motherbaord". There is a driver checker on Gigabytes support but it asks me to remove a microsoft update and only gives instructions for vista. https://www.gigabyte.com/WebPage/19/download-center.html

Id love to know if I could instal win10 with my mobo as is. If I updated my mobo to the new driver it would be a win10 driver and I wouldn´t know if my win10 would work until after its intsalled. If it didn´t work I wouldn´t know why, and I wouldn´t know if it would have worked had I not updated. Also I have never updated a bio/mobo driver so im not comfortable with it...but I will do it if it seems like I should.

I took everything I wanted to keep off of my old HDD onto a usb and an external hard drive already so I don´t mind not cloning my HDD (Unless win 10 can´t work with my mobo or if I knew win7would work if my HDD was cloned.) If I cloned my HDD would I need a product key for win7 or would it just work? I don´t know how my friend got win7 onto my hdd, it works, but I don´t think he bought it and I don´t talk to him anymore, so my concern would be that I couldn´t activate my win7 even if I did clone it and wouldn´t work. I checked and I can´t buy win 7 anymore ;(. But im totally fine with buying win10.

Thank you again for your time.
 
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scentofwhite

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Hello, thank you for replying and thanks for your help, sorry that I am so late in replying I wasn´t able to until now but I have acsess to the laptop now so I can reply :D.

1, Yeah! I am really pleased with my HDD, it served me well. I just woke my PC up from sleep and it is still working, there is screen tearing in a fxed spot about 30% down from the tp of the screen as a horiontal line but its still easy to read what is on the screen. I haven´t let my PC shut down since it restarted the last time but so far its been working fine.

4: I bought a USB flashdrive and a hard drive for that purpose and saved my Documents, pictures, videos, game replays, downloads and bookmarks.

5: 400GB

6:250GB,
Since I have already saved everything I want to keep. I would only want to clone my HDD to get my current OS to work on another drive and I am not sure if my current OS could even work on another drive since I don´t think it is a legit one, thats the impression I got from my friend that installed it after he had intsalled it. So if I had to active it im not sure if it would work. It was working fien on my old HDD though, but he was the one that initially set it up and I have no clue how.

8: : S. I checked Gigabytes site to see if Win10 would work on my MOBO. Win10 wasn´t in the list of Operating Systems that the motherboard supports but there is a windows 10 driver for the motherboard which I linked in the reply above. ( I don´t think I should double link each link).
I would love to be able to just install Windows 10 on the SSD with the motherboard as it is but I have no clue if the motherboard NEEDS to be updated or if updating it would be a risk. My MOBO has Duel UEFI BIOS protection so I should have an extra life.

I have no big preference with what OS im using or if its a clean install or a clone I will go for whatever option is most reliable so that I will have a working system, I don´t mind if it costs ~€300 more.

9: I am the builder, I just didn´t do the initial boot up and I don´t know what my friend did, but since he put windows 7 ultimate on the system and didn´t charge me without even telling me I think he didn´t put on a legit version. He insisted on doing some things before the first windows update so I don´t think its a legit version. I don´t talk to him anymore so I can´t ask.
Yeah if it all works out I will transfer the SSD and leave the rest since they are all about 6 years old already.

Thank you for telling me about my potential mobo - win10 incompatibility, I didn´t even know that could be an issue.
 
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