Upgrading to an ssd

[Lowspecgamer]

I want to buy a 120gb ssd to put windows 10 on it.How would I get the old windows 10 off the harddrive  and leave all of my other files on the hard drive.

[Jurrunio]

right click file, choose delete after installing the OS to the SSD..

[Mira Yurizaki]

13 minutes ago, Lowspecgamer said:

I want to buy a 120gb ssd to put windows 10 on it.How would I get the old windows 10 off the harddrive  and leave all of my other files on the hard drive.

You have a few options:

• Clean install Windows on the SSD and reinstall all of your apps and move the contents of your user folder (in C:Users\[username]) to the SSD
• Create a system image of the hard drive and do a system image restore on the SSD. You'll have to shrink the size of the partition first.
• Use a cloning tool like CloneZilla, Samsung Data Migration (for Samsung SSDs only) or something else. Some tools may require you to shrink the size of the partition before doing the cloning.

Considering you're going to a 120GB SSD, the first option is likely the least headache inducing. If you're paranoid about accidentally formatting HDD during the install process, leave the hard drive unplugged.

[gbergeron]

18 minutes ago, Lowspecgamer said:

I want to buy a 120gb ssd to put windows 10 on it.How would I get the old windows 10 off the harddrive  and leave all of my other files on the hard drive.

1. Install windows 10 on the SSD
2. Load into windows then go windows explorer, select ur HDD, delete windows entire folder and anything else you don't want to keep

3. Better set your downloads to go on a folder on the HDD since 120 GB SSD will fill up very quickly

[Mira Yurizaki]

To specifically address this part:

Quote

 and leave all of my other files on the hard drive

If you want to get rid of the Windows 10 installation but keep your data, assuming you've left all the file locations for saving in their default paths, everything should be in the Users folder on the HDD. One folder of interest I would see about migrating is (assuming the HDD is drive letter D:) is D:\Users\[username]\AppData. It's a hidden folder so you either have to enable visibility or just type it in directly. Either way, if you copy the contents of this folder to C:\Users\[username]AppData, most of your app settings will migrate over.

 

Now if you don't care about what's on the HDD and just want your user data to default to the HDD, the easiest way I think to do so is reformat the HDD and  going to this guide http://blog.danieljost.com/symbolic-links-save-space-ssd/ and follow the steps in the Moving the Users folder onto a different drive (hard mode) section. It's best to do this right after the OS installation.