Advice for Migrating to SSD

[VMaxMuffin]

Hi everyone,

 

I've acquired a 256GB SSD to go with my 1TB WD Blue HDD so when I get around to it I'll be looking to migrate my OS and main games to the SSD.

However, I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing this. I've seen things about cloning the HDD's content to the SSD, but I have about 600GB filled on the HDD which obviously won't fit on the SSD.

 

My plan at the moment is to start just by putting the OS on the SSD and then migrate stuff to it as I go, but I have a few questions about this:

1. If I do a clean OS install on my SSD, will I need to re-enter my product key? (not entirely sure where my W7 disk is and I'd like to avoid having to dig around for it if possible)

2. What about drivers - will I have to reinstall them? (I'm lazy, but I'll do it if there isn't an easier way)

3. What about games and other programs - when I move the ones I want to my SSD (probably just games TBH, I don't particularly care for the fast loading of most programs other than Chrome and a few others) do I have to reinstall, or can I just move things across? (this could be complicated for some of my heavily modded games if I have to reinstall)

 

I haven't ever really done this before because when I moved from my iMac (with Bootcamp) to my Gaming PC I just reinstalled everything because there was a lot of junk I didn't need and so on, whereas this time I want to keep everything I have, just migrate some stuff to the new SSD.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[SlayerOfHellWyrm]

Just for the future, if you ever need a product key, you can use Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder. As for the rest of the post, I'm unfortunately unable to help you, as I've never migrated to an SSD, I've always just done clean installs or clones.

EDIT: Nevermind, like I was going to assume, you can use EaseUS Todo BAckup Manager. Better explained in this great Lifehacker post Basically, you're copying things to an external, whatever won't fit on the new, of you don't want on the new, then wiping it off the original drive, and cloning the remainder to the SSD.

[s3ns3]

if you do a clean windows install you need to install EVERYTHING. you won`t have nothing left

 

if you migrate you need to backup all your important data .then delete the music,games,movies etc or back them up on a borrowed external hard drive. keep just the the program files,documents,users,windows folders and so on untill you have like 200GB used space on the HDD. then clone it to the SSD

[VMaxMuffin]

EDIT: Nevermind, like I was going to assume, you can use EaseUS Todo BAckup Manager. Better explained in this great Lifehacker post Basically, you're copying things to an external, whatever won't fit on the new, of you don't want on the new, then wiping it off the original drive, and cloning the remainder to the SSD.

Thanks for the link, somehow I missed that! I think this is how I'll probably do it, looks like the best option.