SSD issues

[tisi99]

Hello,
I have read your suggestion on the ssd. I installed mine w/o any problems, its a 64gb kingston. Put my os on there, and it is also on the old hhd. It starts up without any probs, but what I don't get is how can I access all the other programs on the old drive while I boot from the ssd? Do I need to have a copy of all my programs on the ssd as well? What about accessing files, music and such? I don't get how to integrate the old hhd into the new configuration. Any suggestions?

 

[DoomsWord89]

Sorry if I dont quite understand.
First, did you say have windows installed on both drives?

 

[WyomingKnott]

You can't run the programs on the old drive because they are not installed into the OS that you are running. When you boot Windoze (I'm assuming) on New drive, it runs New OS and anything installed in Old OS is irrelevant.

If a program is "portable," it does not hook into the registry at all, or install things to the \windows tree. In that case, you may be able to simply put a link to the old program in the new Start menu. For most programs, you will have to reinstall them while the New OS is running.

Do not copy program directories as a shortcut for installing under the new OS. Unless you know that the program is portable, this will likely lead to a program that will not run.

Also, please be aware that it is likely that your system is actually booting from the Old drive and then running the OS on the New drive. Simple test - remove the Old drive and see if the system boots.

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As for seeing data from the old drive, if you look at your list of drives you will see both the new one and the old one. Technically you may see more than two if there were multiple partitions on the drives, but let's ignore that for now. Just open Windows Explorer and look on whatever drives you see there for your files. If you find them, great. If you don't, post again and we will take a look.

 

[tisi99]

Sorry if I dont quite understand.
First, did you say have windows installed on both drives?

yes, I have the old hdd with win7, and the new ssd with win7. When I start up the pc, it asks me which os to use, and when I select the ssd os, none of the programs on the old hdd are accessible. How can I use the programs that are on there? Or rather, how can I integrate the ssd with the os on it to work with the old hdd. thank you for your help.

 

[tisi99]

You can't run the programs on the old drive because they are not installed into the OS that you are running. When you boot Windoze (I'm assuming) on New drive, it runs New OS and anything installed in Old OS is irrelevant.

If a program is "portable," it does not hook into the registry at all, or install things to the \windows tree. In that case, you may be able to simply put a link to the old program in the new Start menu. For most programs, you will have to reinstall them while the New OS is running.

Do not copy program directories as a shortcut for installing under the new OS. Unless you know that the program is portable, this will likely lead to a program that will not run.

Also, please be aware that it is likely that your system is actually booting from the Old drive and then running the OS on the New drive. Simple test - remove the Old drive and see if the system boots.

----------------------------------------------------------

As for seeing data from the old drive, if you look at your list of drives you will see both the new one and the old one. Technically you may see more than two if there were multiple partitions on the drives, but let's ignore that for now. Just open Windows Explorer and look on whatever drives you see there for your files. If you find them, great. If you don't, post again and we will take a look.

Thank you for your response. I tried your last suggestion, disabled the hdd in bios and the computer was not able to find an os. So obviously the install did not go through onto the ssd. I am at a loss now, would you be able to tell me how to do this properly, or point me to a link? I appreciate all your help.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Actually, my best guess is that the OS did install onto the new drive, but there is no Master Boot Record on the drive because the old drive was active at the time of the install.

If by "put my OS there" you mean that you did an install, you can probably make the SSD bootable. Leave the old drive off the system, boot from the installation DVD, and ...
(from here on I am guessing; don't have the time to boot and record the actual prompts)
choose to repair the OS. When it finds your OS installation, tell it that this is the correct one. It will see that the drive is not bootable and make it so.

After that, the old answers still hold. You will have to re-install the programs in your new OS. You might be able to store the program FILES on the old disk, if the install asks where you want the files stored, but most installations modify the registry, or even store files in windows/system32, so you will not be able to run the installations from the previous OS instance.

 

[tisi99]

Actually, my best guess is that the OS did install onto the new drive, but there is no Master Boot Record on the drive because the old drive was active at the time of the install.

If by "put my OS there" you mean that you did an install, you can probably make the SSD bootable. Leave the old drive off the system, boot from the installation DVD, and ...
(from here on I am guessing; don't have the time to boot and record the actual prompts)
choose to repair the OS. When it finds your OS installation, tell it that this is the correct one. It will see that the drive is not bootable and make it so.

After that, the old answers still hold. You will have to re-install the programs in your new OS. You might be able to store the program FILES on the old disk, if the install asks where you want the files stored, but most installations modify the registry, or even store files in windows/system32, so you will not be able to run the installations from the previous OS instance.

Thank you very much for all your suggestions and help. I will do as you suggest and disconnect the hdd, boot from dvd and follow your guide. I did not think that putting in an ssd would be such a pain, but I also never had two hard drives in my computer before either. (only external ones). I'll post an update on how it went. Thanks again.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Thank you very much for all your suggestions and help. I will do as you suggest and disconnect the hdd, boot from dvd and follow your guide. I did not think that putting in an ssd would be such a pain, but I also never had two hard drives in my computer before either. (only external ones). I'll post an update on how it went. Thanks again.

Hah. I've got three in the computer and ten (by actual count) within ten feet of it waiting for their turns to be plugged into my hot-swap slots. Some hold backups, one holds OS experiments, some hold infrequently-used massive data, some my massive collections of pr0n - just kidding on that last.

 

[tisi99]

Hah. I've got three in the computer and ten (by actual count) within ten feet of it waiting for their turns to be plugged into my hot-swap slots. Some hold backups, one holds OS experiments, some hold infrequently-used massive data, some my massive collections of pr0n - just kidding on that last.

Well, I followed your advice, and reinstalled the os onto the ssd. It worked! Went back into bios and disabled the hdd as a source for the os also. Thank you for your help. One other question, how can I access stuff like music (itunes), or office files that are currently on the hdd? I reinstalled itunes, but can't find a way to link the old harddrive as the source for music. I would hate to go and copy all the cds again into the computer! Thanks again.
One other thing, should I remove the old os from the hdd? Or is it good to just have as a backup, just in case?

 

[blackhawk1928]

^Uhm, your actual data files like office, music, video...etc should simply be as files that you can find on the HDD, then simply play them.

About the old OS, its your choice weather to remove it, windows 7 allows you to backup or make snapshots of your current OS and save it where you want so I'd do that.

 

[WyomingKnott]

For Itunes, wander over to the Itunes site and search support for terms like "transfer library." I know that it can be done, because I've done it for my daughter twice.

Oh, wait, that's just for stuff you bought from Itunes. You wrote "I would hate to go and copy all the cds again into the computer!", so these are rips. two solutions: 1) Copy them to the SSD. This is not a great idea, though. Space on the SSD is scarce, it makes sense to keep the old drive for data.
2) I would say "Import those files into the Itunes library," but it sounds like you have already tried and not found how to, and I don't know how. It should be possible. Or use some other player, like Foobar2000 (or do you use an Ipod, too?).

The old OS isn't doing you any harm, except occupying disk space that you could use for useful things. In my opinion, keep it until you need to use the disk space. But make *image* backups of your SSD's two system partitions (the first 100MB hidden one and the one that is your C drive), so that if the SSD dies, or is corrupted, or hit with a virus, you can use that as your backup to restore a working copy of the OS.

Have fun.