About to replace 2 HDDs......what best method to do this?

[Jim Ridgles]

I currently have:

-320GB Seagate HDD (running Windows 7 Ultimate x86, 91GB free)
-500GB Seagate storage drive in my PC (40 GB free)

To replace them, I just bought:

-256GB ADATA SSD (comes with Acronis TrueImage)
-1TB Seagate HDD for storage


My end goal is to have my OS and frequently used apps/games on the SSD and move the bulk of my music/video/media files onto the new HDD. Essentially, take everything from the 320gb drive and put it on the SSD and take everything from the 500GB drive and put it on the 1TB drive.

I have never attempted a migration like this before and thought I'd ask the good folks on Tom's forums what they recommend as far as steps, process (which drive to migrate first?), and what applications to use to create an image of the old drives? Will I need additional items to do this swap?

Any recommendations or tips would be greatly appreciated

 

[USAFRet]

Overall, a clean OS install on the new SSD is by far the best way forward.

After that, install whatever, on whichever drive suits.

 

[Jim Ridgles]

Why is a clean install necessary? Won't an image of the original OS' drive be fine?

 

[USAFRet]

Why is a clean install necessary? Won't an image of the original OS' drive be fine?

Not necessary, but highly recommended.

1. Your current 320GB drive has 91GB free. That brings it to ~230GB used space.
For a good migration, it needs to be under 200GB. And at that, it leaves absolutely no more usable free space on the SSD.

2. How 'old' is the current install? Unless it is pretty recent, do you want to drag all the old cruft across to a new SSD?

3. What do you want on the SSD? A lot of stuff does not need to be on there. Doc, music, etc. So you have to move that stuff around anyway.

4. Some people have reported performance issues migrating from an HDD to SSD. Sector alignment, etc.

 

[Jim Ridgles]

Right on, thanks man. I have a few more questions now too.....


In regards to the actual image creation itself.....where will the image save to before it gets moved to the new drive? I don't have the capacity on either of the existing drives and I'm not using the cloud option.

Also, if I'm installing a fresh Windows 7, how will that effect the image that is made of the old OS drive? Can I select to not include my current Win7 in the image?

Lastly, for the storage drive, will I even need to create an image at all? Can I just copy all the files from the 500GB drive directly to the 1TB drive? If so, what's the best/fastest way to do this?