Questions about SSD

[Chopsoki]

Hi there! Quick question for upgrading my pc. I currently have a 1TB hard drive with most of my games and files on it including windows. I have gotten and SSD for windows and some of my more played games but I had a few questions before upgrading my pc with the SSD. So when I set my SSD as the boot drive and I load up my computer will my desktop still show all of my games and icons like before? Also, when Windows updates will it update on just the SSD or both the SSD and my storage drive since both have Windows? Thanks!!

[Jurrunio]

You could install Windows into the SSD first, then manually delete the boot files and OS files in the HDD. The shortcuts will all be gone though. For those in steam you could simply set your old steam folder as one of its directories.

[Chopsoki]

umm, which files should I delete from the hdd? Is there a list that I could use?

[F___M]

You didn't say how big the ssd is. You should image the old hard drive to the ssd.  When you do it that way, your ssd is an exact copy of the 1T hard drive.

[Chopsoki]

ahh sorry, i should have included that. My SSD is only 250gb while the hard drive is 1TB and it is filled with around 500gb of stuff so I can't exactly clone the drive.

[F___M]

In that case, you will have to reload everything.  The desktop will not look like the current desktop.

[Chopsoki]

oh ok

[mariushm]

Here's the best way to do it.

Disconnect the 1 TB drive from the computer... just pull the cables from it. This way you won't erase anything by accident.

Install the SSD and install Windows on it.

When you're done, turn off the pc and connect the mechanical drive back.

You'll boot from the SSD and the mechanical drive will show up as a second hard drive in your computer.

You can reinstall Steam on your SSD and from Steam's options, you can create a Steam games folder on your SSD (ex C:\Steam) and one on the mechanical drive (for example D:\Steam or whatever).

Shut down Steam, then simply go on your mechanical drive where the old Steam was installed (maybe c:\program files\steam\steamapps\ and inside that folder you should have folders for each game you already had installed on the mechanical drive.

Move the folders where you want them ... either on the SSD or the newly defined folder on the mechanical drive.

Start Steam. It will auto detect the games in the folders. If not, you can simply go in your games list and click on a game to Install / Download and tell steam to download where you already moved the folder (ex if you moved folder to C:\Steam, tell Steam to install game on C:\Steam).

Steam will then detect that some files are already there and will barely download anything, it will check the integrity of each file and only download corrupted or missing files.

 

You may also want to save your Google Chrome or Firefox profiles... you have to enable "Show hidden files" in Windows Explorer to see the folders. 

in Windows 7 these are in C:\Users\[username]\ AppData \ [ Local | Roaming] \ [Google \ Chrome \ User Data | Mozilla \ Firefox \ Profiles]

 

Remember the path and copy the folders to your SSD on the same path.

 

Windows may not let you delete the old Windows installation from the mechanical drive as it thinks you may be trying to delete the operating system on the SSD.

You may have to boot into safe mode (by pressing F8 when Windows is just about to load). From there, you should be able to delete the Windows and Program files folders.

 

[Chopsoki]

I see, do you think it would just be easier for me to format the HDD and just start everything over

[mariushm]

Yeah, you could do that.

You could move some Steam games to SSD, simply to not download them again, and then boot into safe mode and quick format the mechanical drive.

 

[Chopsoki]

ok thanks!