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Moving my Hard Drive into a new P.C.

GenericBot1
By GenericBot1
in Storage Devices
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Go to solution Solved by aDoomGuy,
Just now, GenericBot1 said:

So does that mean after everything is installed than I can just delete the windows files on the hard drive to create more space?

Yeah you can do that. Some files will be not so easily be deleted but Unlocker should help you with that, Unlocker is a free application. There is more than just the Windows folder however.

 

In your user folder you have hidden folders where applications store cache and settings. Look at C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME with hidden files and folders shown and see how much data is in folder called AppData, on my PC there is 20+ GB in that folder. Your user folder surely contains save games and in C:\Program Data there is various files used by installed applications which also should be deleted. My Program Data is around 5 gigs large. Also the Pagefile should be removed from the root folder of your current C:\.

I could remove around 70 GB with these steps on my own PC.

 

Another option you can try is using cloning software and see if it has migrate functionality, that should let you move Windows and possibly programs to the smaller drive but I'm not sure how it will work if you have more data on the old one than the new one can fit. Removing games and other large things that can be reinstalled later would probably solve this and the easiest course of action would then be to migrate and then wipe the old drive once you checked that you didn't loose anything but still I would make backup of important things.

Posted

Hey guys, so I'm getting a new P.C early next year and I want to move my current two terabyte hard drive over to the new system. The questions I have are that 1: windows is currently installed on my hard drive and for my new P.C, I want windows on the SSD that I get. I'm going to have to get windows again for the new P.C so, will the existing windows files in my hard drive effect anything? 2: Will the change effect any of the games and applications I already have installed on the Hard Drive? Any input and other suggestions would help a lot. 

 

(Note: I plan to get an Md2 NVMe for my new system)

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You set the boot order in BIOS to boot from the new drive so it wont affect a new installation much more than taking up space.

 

2. It depends.....

 

If it is game installed from Epic Fail Store or disc it will need to be reinstalled completely. If it is from Steam/Battlenet/Origin you can point the applications to the new location but all the other applications will also have to be reinstalled for the most part. I would just back up any things important and wipe the drive. Remember that boot drives have all sorts of installed programs, their cache, bootloader, OS and a lot of things that will take up space. If you only care if it works or not though, yeah it probably will work without wiping anything.

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45 minutes ago, GenericBot1 said:

Hey guys, so I'm getting a new P.C early next year and I want to move my current two terabyte hard drive over to the new system. The questions I have are that 1: windows is currently installed on my hard drive and for my new P.C, I want windows on the SSD that I get. I'm going to have to get windows again for the new P.C so, will the existing windows files in my hard drive effect anything? 2: Will the change effect any of the games and applications I already have installed on the Hard Drive? Any input and other suggestions would help a lot. 

 

(Note: I plan to get an Md2 NVMe for my new system)

So does that mean after everything is installed than I can just delete the windows files on the hard drive to create more space?

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Just now, GenericBot1 said:

So does that mean after everything is installed than I can just delete the windows files on the hard drive to create more space?

Yeah you can do that. Some files will be not so easily be deleted but Unlocker should help you with that, Unlocker is a free application. There is more than just the Windows folder however.

 

In your user folder you have hidden folders where applications store cache and settings. Look at C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME with hidden files and folders shown and see how much data is in folder called AppData, on my PC there is 20+ GB in that folder. Your user folder surely contains save games and in C:\Program Data there is various files used by installed applications which also should be deleted. My Program Data is around 5 gigs large. Also the Pagefile should be removed from the root folder of your current C:\.

I could remove around 70 GB with these steps on my own PC.

 

Another option you can try is using cloning software and see if it has migrate functionality, that should let you move Windows and possibly programs to the smaller drive but I'm not sure how it will work if you have more data on the old one than the new one can fit. Removing games and other large things that can be reinstalled later would probably solve this and the easiest course of action would then be to migrate and then wipe the old drive once you checked that you didn't loose anything but still I would make backup of important things.

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16 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Yeah you can do that. Some files will be not so easily be deleted but Unlocker should help you with that, Unlocker is a free application. There is more than just the Windows folder however.

 

In your user folder you have hidden folders where applications store cache and settings. Look at C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME with hidden files and folders shown and see how much data is in folder called AppData, on my PC there is 20+ GB in that folder. Your user folder surely contains save games and in C:\Program Data there is various files used by installed applications which also should be deleted. My Program Data is around 5 gigs large. Also the Pagefile should be removed from the root folder of your current C:\.

I could remove around 70 GB with these steps on my own PC.

 

Another option you can try is using cloning software and see if it has migrate functionality, that should let you move Windows and possibly programs to the smaller drive but I'm not sure how it will work if you have more data on the old one than the new one can fit. Removing games and other large things that can be reinstalled later would probably solve this and the easiest course of action would then be to migrate and then wipe the old drive once you checked that you didn't loose anything but still I would make backup of important things.

Thanks for the help bro

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