I'm trying to move all my information off my drives to one ssd

PresidentZach · June 29, 2022

Hello. I am upgrading my computer and I want to have all my information on my desktop moved to a single ssd; the ones you slide directly into your motherboard, so it'll (hopefully) be super fast. I have a couple questions though.

1. What's the best way of combining all the information from 2 drives into 1. I Have a 1tb hard drive boot drive and a 120gb ssd. I honestly only have like 500gb in total of information, but I decided to get an ssd to run my more important applications off of. Since my hard drive is larger, I will be transferring all of the information from the ssd onto the hard drive, or atleast that's what I want to do. My current motherboard doesn't have the ssd slot in it, so I can't simply just insert the ssd and transfer everything onto that.

2. How do I get all the combined information off of the hard drive onto my new ssd (also 1tb). My plan is to plug my old hd onto my new motherboard with the new ssd inserted, then transferring it like that, but is that possible since im transferring a copy of windows.

3. Do I have to buy a new copy of windows.

4. Is it safe to store stuff on my boot drive. I really like to stay organized and it would be awesome to just have one drive for everything.

PDifolco · June 29, 2022

What do you mean exactly by "information" ? I mean stuff like photos, Office files etc can be transferred easily from one drive to another, but all programs (whatever the genre, drivers, utilities/tools, office/productivity, games..) need to be "installed" to the OS, you can't just move them around (could work with pre Windows or indie software, but not even sure)

So if you want to "transfer" a 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD (half filled) to one new 1TB SSD, you should :

Reinstall Windows on the new drive, transferring it is a call to endless issues - you can reuse your current key unless it is OEM restricted
Reinstall all of your software/games from scratch
Then you can copy to your leisure your photos/movies/office etc.. personal files
Note that for saved games and such, it's a pita to copy them because they end up in specific folders according to each game, simplest modern method is to use cloud saves for Steam/Epic/GoG/whatever, but for the others one you'll have to check file locations and copy them back to the new drive...

Poinkachu · June 29, 2022

53 minutes ago, PresidentZach said:

Hello. I am upgrading my computer and I want to have all my information on my desktop moved to a single ssd; the ones you slide directly into your motherboard, so it'll (hopefully) be super fast. I have a couple questions though.

1. What's the best way of combining all the information from 2 drives into 1. I Have a 1tb hard drive boot drive and a 120gb ssd. I honestly only have like 500gb in total of information, but I decided to get an ssd to run my more important applications off of. Since my hard drive is larger, I will be transferring all of the information from the ssd onto the hard drive, or atleast that's what I want to do. My current motherboard doesn't have the ssd slot in it, so I can't simply just insert the ssd and transfer everything onto that.

2. How do I get all the combined information off of the hard drive onto my new ssd (also 1tb). My plan is to plug my old hd onto my new motherboard with the new ssd inserted, then transferring it like that, but is that possible since im transferring a copy of windows.

3. Do I have to buy a new copy of windows.

4. Is it safe to store stuff on my boot drive. I really like to stay organized and it would be awesome to just have one drive for everything.

1. Uh... Copy then paste.
2. If you want to clone windows to another drive you need to use a software. But I'd say it's best if you just reinstall windows on the new drive.
3. No as long you still have the key
4. Define safe.

You can create a partition to store files, that way whenever you need to reinstall windows, your data will be safe.
But if that one drive breaks, then it's bye bye everything.

Also it's better to not fill an SSD to the brim. You'll get lower perf.
Being organized isn't about putting everything on 1 drive, it's about being not messy.