Transferring Windows to a new SSD and more. Help!

Hold-Ma-Beer · January 31, 2021

I've ordered a 240GB Crucial BX500 for windows and all types of softwares. I've some questions regarding it..

1. How do I copy windows [C drive] on the SSD? Is it even possible?

2. Will I've to reinstall any softwares currently residing on C drive?

3. I want to move my game launchers (Rockstar launcher, Steam, Epic games, etc) to a partition on SSD. If I uninstall them and reinstall them on the SSD, will my games files be also deleted? If so, how can I prevent it?

4. How much storage should I allocate to windows?

Please help me out.

Thank you!

Archer42 · January 31, 2021

Do not partition such a small ssd - it will only cause extra issues and provide no benefits.

What you'll have to do is make sure that current system partition fits onto ssd and simply clone it there by any appropriate program, clonezilla for example, and expand partition to take whole ssd.

As for game launchers - you'll probably have some issues if you do something like this, but it is better to ask support or appropriate communities regarding each launcher. Can always use symlinks if you want to move stuff around without breaking it though...

Sport Driver · January 31, 2021

1. I used Macrium reflect to clone hdd to new ssd. https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Worked well and it works going from bigger HDD to smaller SSD (if less than SSD capacity is used on HDD, obviously).

2. If you clone it then no, you won't have to do that.

3 and 4 I haven't done so I have no idea.

Hold-Ma-Beer · January 31, 2021

1 hour ago, Archer42 said:

Do not partition such a small ssd - it will only cause extra issues and provide no benefits.

Actually, I really wanted to keep the softwares separate from windows files... Should I not do that?

Archer42 · January 31, 2021

1 hour ago, Hold-Ma-Beer said:

Actually, I really wanted to keep the softwares separate from windows files... Should I not do that?

Why? What's the advantage of doing so?

Main reason not to do it is space - you need to keep some free space on each partition for stuff to work, so the more partitions you have the more space is just "wasted" this way. Also you will, almost certainly, run into situation when one partition is full while another one has a bunch of space at some point, which would be annoying.