Installing a SSD into a build that has a mechanical hard drive with Windows already on it.

[WalterK]

Title says almost all of it, basically I have a mechanical hard drive (1 TB) that has everything downloaded on to it (games, files, programs, windows, etc.) and I plan to install a 240 gb SSD to use as a boot drive into the build tomorrow. Now my question is: Do I use a media creation tool to install windows on the ssd and format all the partitions of the hard drive in the process? Do I delete all the things off my computer other than windows and the programs i want on the SSD and use a program to migrate it to the SSD from the hard drive? Do I just use a media creation tool to install windows on to the SSD and not format the hard drive in the process (leaving windows on the 1 TB hard drive)?

 

My other question is: After I've setup the SSD as the boot drive should I install the main game I play and main programs? I don't have much that I use daily other than Chrome(ranging from google docs and slides to youtube), Fortnite, Itunes Music, Discord, and CS:GO) Should I put all these on the SSD or put them on the hard drive and does chrome kill solid state drives? (I've heard it ruins them) Also do I install all my drivers on the SSD aswell?

 

Side Note: I currently plan to do the first option of using a media creation tool to install windows on the ssd and format all the partitions of the hard drive as I was planning to reinstall windows soon to attempt to resolve other issues and I don't have much at all on the computer... (just steam, a few games, itunes, discord, and Chrome)

 

[Buyingbf_]

1) Doing a clean install of Windows and formatting hard drive to empty it: Fast and easy, but, y'know, you lose your hard drive data.

2) Deleting unnecessary stuff off your hard drive and cloning it to your new SSD: Takes long, but you will have exactly the same experience as you had on your hard drive, just with SSD performance.

3) Doing clean install of Windows on SSD and keeping HDD intact: Fast and easy and you keep hard drive data.

I personally did option 3 since your situation is exactly the same as the one I had years ago. However, I had to reinstall my main apps, tell Steam where my old games were on my hard drive, and my new Windows didn't have entries of my old installed programs. For example: if I searched up GIMP on my old install, that's the first result. If I search GIMP on my new Windows install, I get nothing. Maybe at most the folder on my other drive. But my Windows doesn't know that GIMP's been installed so I don't have shortcuts and stuff. Had to manually make my own shortcuts or move the install folder to my main drive.

 

An SSD is literally one of the best decisions you can make when upgrading a computer. Extremely noticeable increase in performance. If you have space, install all your main programs and such on it. Your drivers also have to be installed on your boot drive. If your Steam games are too big, just install them on your old 1TB. Also, I've had Chrome running on my SSD ever since I first got it, feels fine. No problems yet. 

[kb5zue]

Looks like you have a pretty good plan of attack to your situation.  First of all, make sure that you have backups of all your important files (documents, pictures, etc.).  Disconnect the HDD before installing the SSD so when you do install the SSD, it is the only drive in the system.  Using the Windows Media Creation tool is the best thing you can do as it will allow you to partition and format the SSD to suit the Windows install.

 

After complete install of Windows, make sure you get all the download updates and drivers, etc., prior to hooking back up your HDD.  You need to understand that since you are doing a complete, fresh install of Windows, the software on the HDD may not run and you will need to download/install your games and software again.  That's okay because it will allow you to choose between the SSD and the HDD as to the install locations when installing the stuff again.

 

You don't need to put things like documents, pictures and files on the SSD as they are data files only and don't really need the addition of speed for their use.  You can go ahead and put whatever games on the SSD but just remember, some games are really space hogs and may cut down the available space on the SSD pretty quickly.  I know first hand that World of Warcraft is a really big space hog.  It hogs something like 70-90 gigs of space just by itself.

 

Just a reminder, backup files, backup files, backup files.

[WalterK]

22 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

Looks like you have a pretty good plan of attack to your situation.  First of all, make sure that you have backups of all your important files (documents, pictures, etc.).  Disconnect the HDD before installing the SSD so when you do install the SSD, it is the only drive in the system.  Using the Windows Media Creation tool is the best thing you can do as it will allow you to partition and format the SSD to suit the Windows install.

 

After complete install of Windows, make sure you get all the download updates and drivers, etc., prior to hooking back up your HDD.  You need to understand that since you are doing a complete, fresh install of Windows, the software on the HDD may not run and you will need to download/install your games and software again.  That's okay because it will allow you to choose between the SSD and the HDD as to the install locations when installing the stuff again.

 

You don't need to put things like documents, pictures and files on the SSD as they are data files only and don't really need the addition of speed for their use.  You can go ahead and put whatever games on the SSD but just remember, some games are really space hogs and may cut down the available space on the SSD pretty quickly.  I know first hand that World of Warcraft is a really big space hog.  It hogs something like 70-90 gigs of space just by itself.

 

Just a reminder, backup files, backup files, backup files.

Nothing on here to backup at all, all my school documents are digital and I keep photos on my phone. However, I like the idea of just completely formatting the hard drive so I can just choose exactly what I want on it and not having to deal with 2 versions of windows. The only way I know of formatting the hard drive is by doing it while setting up windows in the media creation tool when i have to select where to install windows and just delete all the partitions of the hard drive. This wouldn't be possible if I disconnected the hard drive during the windows setup process so how would I do the format of the hard drive? Thankyou for the speedy replies.

[kb5zue]

2 minutes ago, WalterK said:

Nothing on here to backup at all, all my school documents are digital and I keep photos on my phone. However, I like the idea of just completely formatting the hard drive so I can just choose exactly what I want on it and not having to deal with 2 versions of windows. The only way I know of formatting the hard drive is by doing it while setting up windows in the media creation tool when i have to select where to install windows and just delete all the partitions of the hard drive. This wouldn't be possible if I disconnected the hard drive during the windows setup process so how would I do the format of the hard drive? Thankyou for the speedy replies.

Back in the day we called a second drive a slave.  Once you get the SSD up and running, reconnect the old drive and you can do with it whatever you want.  If you want to nuke the drive, just go into the disk management side of Windows and delete the partitions on the old drive.  What some people don't fully understand is that when you delete a file, it does not fully disappear.  Deleting a file only removes the file pointers for that file.  With the right software you can "find" those file pointers and recover that file.  There are businesses out that who specialize in file recovery.  To make something fully disappear, you need to delete the partition where that file resides.  When you delete a partition, it removes the file allocation table (it's like an excel spreadsheet) that stores the physical location (using the pointers) of all the files in that partition.

 

So after getting the SSD up and running, reconnect the old drive as a secondary drive and use disk management to get rid of all the partitions on the old drive.  Once they are all gone, then you can repartition it in to as many drives as you want and it will work great and the old stuff will be gone for good.

[WalterK]

54 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

Back in the day we called a second drive a slave.  Once you get the SSD up and running, reconnect the old drive and you can do with it whatever you want.  If you want to nuke the drive, just go into the disk management side of Windows and delete the partitions on the old drive.  What some people don't fully understand is that when you delete a file, it does not fully disappear.  Deleting a file only removes the file pointers for that file.  With the right software you can "find" those file pointers and recover that file.  There are businesses out that who specialize in file recovery.  To make something fully disappear, you need to delete the partition where that file resides.  When you delete a partition, it removes the file allocation table (it's like an excel spreadsheet) that stores the physical location (using the pointers) of all the files in that partition.

 

So after getting the SSD up and running, reconnect the old drive as a secondary drive and use disk management to get rid of all the partitions on the old drive.  Once they are all gone, then you can repartition it in to as many drives as you want and it will work great and the old stuff will be gone for good.

Alright, thankyou for your time and knowledge! I'll update my results tomorrow post "operation."

[WalterK]

On 12/30/2018 at 10:13 PM, kb5zue said:

Back in the day we called a second drive a slave.  Once you get the SSD up and running, reconnect the old drive and you can do with it whatever you want.  If you want to nuke the drive, just go into the disk management side of Windows and delete the partitions on the old drive.  What some people don't fully understand is that when you delete a file, it does not fully disappear.  Deleting a file only removes the file pointers for that file.  With the right software you can "find" those file pointers and recover that file.  There are businesses out that who specialize in file recovery.  To make something fully disappear, you need to delete the partition where that file resides.  When you delete a partition, it removes the file allocation table (it's like an excel spreadsheet) that stores the physical location (using the pointers) of all the files in that partition.

 

So after getting the SSD up and running, reconnect the old drive as a secondary drive and use disk management to get rid of all the partitions on the old drive.  Once they are all gone, then you can repartition it in to as many drives as you want and it will work great and the old stuff will be gone for good.

Alright so I have installed windows on the SSD, formatted the hard drive, installed all drivers and programs on the SSD that I want, and am now currently trying to figure out how to make everything else now save to the hard drive. I'm watching youtube videos on it and it seems i have to create folders in that hard drive and set it as the location in which chrome downloads stuff. Is this correct and do I need to do this for everything I have that installs stuff (i.e. itunes, steam)

 

Also a side note, my mic has suddenly become muffled after this process. I'm assuming its some sort of driver or incompatibility, but I don't know how to approach it. My headset is a HyperX Cloud II. The sound seems perfectly fine but the mic sounds like I have pillows around it. (This headset does not have any software of its own.)

[kb5zue]

Unfortunately your downloads default to Drive C:, that's just the way that Windows operates.  But, from what I understand there is a way to change that to Drive D but it has something to do with the windows registry.  Some software out there allows the user to change the download location, I believe that iTunes does this but not sure.

 

Just looking around a little using google search, I found this.  Maybe it will help.

 

Open the File Explorer on your Windows 10 PC. Right click on the Downloads in the left pane of your File Explorer, and select Properties. Go to the Location tab and enter the new path for your desired download folder. You can also move already downloaded files to the folder from here.       Aug 14, 2015

 

Looks like there is a way after all.  Good luck and happy new year.

[kb5zue]

Sorry, but for your problem with the microphone, I don't use a mic and never have so I can't help you with that one.

 

[paulw10]

On 12/31/2018 at 3:30 AM, Buyingbf_ said:

2) Deleting unnecessary stuff off your hard drive and cloning it to your new SSD: Takes long, but you will have exactly the same experience as you had on your hard drive, just with SSD performance.

have a follow up question here as i am in a similar situation. i bought a crucial mx500 500GB SSD and it comes with acronis software so i was going to use that and clone the drive. but i was reading something that said you can't use clone option if drives have different sector sizes. the crucial drive has 4096 physical sector size, and my mechanical drive is a Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM006 and when i check system information in windows and check the disk section the bytes/sector field shows as 512.

can someone explain if this means clone is not an option. 

[kb5zue]

41 minutes ago, paulw10 said:

have a follow up question here as i am in a similar situation. i bought a crucial mx500 500GB SSD and it comes with acronis software so i was going to use that and clone the drive. but i was reading something that said you can't use clone option if drives have different sector sizes. the crucial drive has 4096 physical sector size, and my mechanical drive is a Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM006 and when i check system information in windows and check the disk section the bytes/sector field shows as 512.

can someone explain if this means clone is not an option. 

You might want to post this as a new thread.  You will get better responses that way instead of leaving you here alone at the end of the tail.

[WalterK]

Fixed mic issue and hard drive all complete. Thanks for the help!