New SSD

[Shadowthehippo]

I have recently bought a new SSD (Sandisk SSD Plus 120gb) and I would like to know how to set it up and move windows 7 and important applications from my Western Digital Blue 1tb Hard Drive.

[xTrekStorex]

you can use tools like Acronis to clone it. then just swap them out and after the boot make some adjustments to windows settings. you can either read guides on how to do that by hand on the web or use tools like SSDFresh to do that for you. they are shareware but after one use you can just uninstall them - job done.

 

but make sure AHCI is activated in your BIOS/UEFI first. otherwise I'd recommend to change your windows to AHCI-mode first (google "ahci after windows install") or even do a clean reinstall on the SSD with the AHCI setting enabled. reinstall in general is better since windows optimizes itself for the SSD (at least windows8 does, win7 does partly) and most of the old storagedrivers are gone.

[Shadowthehippo]

What do I do here?

[xTrekStorex]

What do I do here?

did you just plug it in? well it seems like the drive has no partitiontable yet so windows doesnt know what to make of it. initializing it will write a new table on it (either GPT or MBR - GPT when you have an UEFI, since it was autoselected go for GPT).

but doing so will make everything on it unreadable basically deleting it since new data will be written over everything over time. so if it is new and unused press OK.

[Shadowthehippo]

Now what? Im kinda new at this.

[xTrekStorex]

Now what? Im kinda new at this.

right click and "new volume". basically answer all the questions windows asks you and after a few minutes it will be formatted and ready to use.

 

but didnt you want to clone your HDD on it? for that you dont need all this. acronis will reformat the drive for you and clone to it

[Hotpeppa1]

Now what? Im kinda new at this.

 

If you still didnt get the hang of it try watching this:

 

https://youtu.be/f2kcJH8ASN8

 

Edit: Skip to about 2:56