trying to switch ssd to boot drive

[Guptesh]

a while ago i acquired a samsung 970 evo 500gb ssd. i installed it then formatted it then started installing a bunch of games onto it because my hdd was running low on space. however my friend told me i shouldve set it as my boot drive so it will make my pc boot and load faster. im aware i have to clone windows onto the ssd then bios will recognize the ssd but since ive already downloaded games onto it im unsure if i could do it. (if you couldnt tell already im not very knowledgable in this topic all i do is just play games. lol.) i have an intel i5-9400f with an nvidia geforce gtx 1650 an asrock b360m motherboard and 16gb vengeance pro ram and 1tb hdd and the 500gb ssd.

[LionSpeck]

45 minutes ago, Guptesh said:

a while ago i acquired a samsung 970 evo 500gb ssd. i installed it then formatted it then started installing a bunch of games onto it because my hdd was running low on space. however my friend told me i shouldve set it as my boot drive so it will make my pc boot and load faster. im aware i have to clone windows onto the ssd then bios will recognize the ssd but since ive already downloaded games onto it im unsure if i could do it. (if you couldnt tell already im not very knowledgable in this topic all i do is just play games. lol.) i have an intel i5-9400f with an nvidia geforce gtx 1650 an asrock b360m motherboard and 16gb vengeance pro ram and 1tb hdd and the 500gb ssd.

Hi, welcome to the forum!
If your current SSD free space is more than the HDD occupied space, then you can do it without having to delete anything. On the converse, you should either delete some games off your SSD, or delete something off your HDD.

When the aforementioned conditions are met, you can proceed with the transfer, after making a backup of everything that is really important. This should always be done, with no exceptions. Photos, documents, etc. It goes without saying that the backups ought to be done on external drives, or internal drives that will not be affected by the operations.

 

Using the Windows Create and format hard disk partitions software (which is preinstalled), you should:

- right click and Shrink Volume the SSD (games) partition, to reduce its size. You should reduce it enough that more than 500GB of free, unallocated space is left outside the partition. Make it 510GB just to be sure.

- right click and Shrink Volume the HDD (OS) partition, making it smaller than 500GB in total. Again, about 490GB just to be sure.

 

From now on, I can't really give precise instructions, as I don't have any of these software at hand. The programs are pretty straightforward, but if you need, you can post screenshots and we'll make sure you're doing the right stuff.

Using another software, like Minitool Partition Wizard, Macrium Reflect or GParted (on a Linux live USB), you should now:

- one at a time, copy the three partitions that are on the HDD (the main 500GB OS, the recovery partition and the EFI partition) onto the unallocated space on the SSD. This process will probably take a while.

 

- when it's done, reboot your PC and enter the BIOS. In there, depending on your motherboard, under some section regarding Boot order, make changes so that the SSD comes first in priority.

- save and exit, and when you're into Windows, make sure that you're running on your SSD. If that's the case, we're mostly done.

 

Back to Minitool, Macrium or GParted:

- delete the three partitions on your HDD.

- move the games partition from your SSD to your HDD.

- expand the games partition so that it fills the whole HDD. This could take a while.

- expand the OS partition so that it fills the whole SSD. This one operation may require a restart, but the program will warn you if that's the case. This, too, may take a while.

 

Now you should have your games on the 1TB HDD, and your OS (3 partitions) on your 500GB SSD.

[LionSpeck]

woops, accidentally replied

Edited February 20, 2022 by LionSpeck