[SOLVED] Adding additional SSD, and transferring W10 to this. Best way?

[Frooby]

Hi again.

This refers to an HP Elitebook 850 G3 which currently has a (nearly full) 500GB HDD. I have just bought a WD NVMe 512GB card to add to the laptop, and will want this to become the main 'software' drive - W10, Office, browsers and all that stuff, as well as for files. I'll be keeping the existing HDD, mainly as a back-up drive, so will want to remove the Win10 from that at some point (as it'll be on the SSD).

Q - what's the best way to go about this?!

I have: an MS account with W10 digitally licensed to the laptop. A large capacity USB stick to download a fresh install. Saved all important docs on to another USB just in case. Experience of making fresh installs of W10, and of using Macrium Reflect - tho' I need to follow the steps like an automaton.

My options would appear to be:

1) Download W10 installer onto USB, remove old HDD, insert new SSD card, boot up and install the fresh W10 onto it. Then what? Refit HDD, keep the software on there that daughter wants (games...) and delete everything else? How do I remove the old W10 from this? Is this a fraught way to do this job...?

2) Clone the HDD on to the SSD (can this be done with the SSD M.2 installed in the machine? I hope so, 'cos I don't have a USB connector for the M.2). Then make the SSD the boot-up drive. Wipe the old HDD. But then I'm stuck with a near-full SSD, unless daughter can reinstall the games she wants on to the old HDD after I remove them from the SSD - not sure she can.

3) Another way...

Thanks for your advice.

 

[USAFRet]

How full is "nearly full" ?

For a successful clone operation, with that target drive, that actual consumed space needs to be below 400GB.

Your laptop can have both the current C drive, AND the new WD installed at the same time?
If so, that makes this very easy.

Details to follow.

 

[USAFRet]

This is the system referred to in here: ?

[SOLVED] - Very basic questions about program folders and file sizes ?

Hi all. Getting daughter's laptop ready for an additional SSD to be added to which the existing HDD's contents will be cloned - the old HDD will then be wiped and used as a file back-up device. She's managed to fill the 500GB drive until there's only 91GB left, but none of this is taken up...

forums.tomshardware.com

If so, I would NOT recommend a clone operation. There seems to be some things wrong with the current install. A clone operation will NOT fix that.

 

[Frooby]

Hi again, USAFRet.

Yes, it's that laptop

The existing drive shows as 85.8GB free of 464GB. Yes, there's room inside for an M.2 NVME card (which I've just bought) whilst retaining the existing HDD which is 2.5" format. It's a 3-year old laptop.

I've posted the WinStat results on that other thread.

Cheers.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi again, USAFRet.

Yes, it's that laptop

The existing drive shows as 85.8GB free of 464GB. Yes, there's room inside for an M.2 NVME card (which I've just bought) whilst retaining the existing HDD which is 2.5" format. It's a 3-year old laptop.

I've posted the WinStat results on that other thread.

Cheers.

There's the oddity of the additional "Program Files x86" that somehow came into being.

The data and drive size you have is right on the edge of the good side of doable.

 

[Frooby]

Ok. Daughter is going to have to be told that at least some of these games need to go. Hopefully they will still be available on an account wherever she got them from, so should be able to download them again when she gets a PC or laptop that'll actually run them! I guess unsurprisingly, they don't run at all well on this laptop. This will be down to the lack of dedicated graphics card, I'm guessing? (i5-6200U and 8GB)

If I can lose some of these games - get it down to, ooh, ~300GB on the HDD, then is 'clone' the best way to go, or would you recommend a fresh install on to the M.2?

Thanks again.

 

[USAFRet]

Ok. Daughter is going to have to be told that at least some of these games need to go. Hopefully they will still be available on an account wherever she got them from, so should be able to download them again when she gets a PC or laptop that'll actually run them! I guess unsurprisingly, they don't run at all well on this laptop. This will be down to the lack of dedicated graphics card, I'm guessing? (i5-6200U and 8GB)

If I can lose some of these games - get it down to, ooh, ~300GB on the HDD, then is 'clone' the best way to go, or would you recommend a fresh install on to the M.2?

Thanks again.

Given the state of that OS, a fresh install is recommended.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

That extra 'Program Files' folder didn't just appear by itself.
What other weirdnesses are in there?

But, you can try it if you wish. Steps below.

 

[USAFRet]

-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------

 

[Frooby]

Many thanks.

Yes, I think I'd prefer a clean W10 install on the new M.2 SSD too. I've downloaded the W10 file on to a USB stick ready for this.

If I go for this fresh install on the M.2, when I refit the old HDD would I be able to delete the Windows on there? Just thinking that if I can leave her daft games on the old drive, it won't do any harm, and all the sensible stuff she needs for Uni - O/S, Office, browsers, specific software - will be accessed speedily from the new SSD.

So, I'd first install the M.2 and check that it's recognised and is allocated a drive letter? I can then remove the old HDD, plug in the USB stick and fire away...?

 

[Bob.B]

Ok. Daughter is going to have to be told that at least some of these games need to go. Hopefully they will still be available on an account wherever she got them from, so should be able to download them again when she gets a PC or laptop that'll actually run them! I guess unsurprisingly, they don't run at all well on this laptop. This will be down to the lack of dedicated graphics card, I'm guessing? (i5-6200U and 8GB)

If I can lose some of these games - get it down to, ooh, ~300GB on the HDD, then is 'clone' the best way to go, or would you recommend a fresh install on to the M.2?

Thanks again.

The igp on that pc is not meant for gaming, board and card games ok, action games forget it.
Thought....assuming the pc runs ok from the hdd except for games.
Run a pass of disk cleanup on the hdd don't forget system files.
Clone hdd to ssd.
Remove hdd and verify the machine functions from the ssd.
Uninstall all games.
Connect hdd and create one large partition using the entire hdd and format.
Let daughter install games again on the hdd if she wants.

 

[Frooby]

Progress...

Fitted new M.2 and used AOMEI to remove/merge/delete/amalgamate the partitions (it was a previously used drive) to get a whopping 476GBs of space free (nice bit of software - intuitive, as it would have had to be.)

Also went mad deleting the whole square-bracket Prog Files folder and contained games. A bit of surfing also showed that some of these games - was it Assassins Creed, can't remember - has caused issues for other users where the part of the file that holds the user's game 'results/progress mysteriously consumed huge amounts of space, like 70GB when it should only be a few MBs. Can't remember the details, but after confirming with daughter that she still has these games on her 'Epic' on-line accounts (so can re-download them in future if she wants), my deleting fingers went overtime. I now have 371GB free of 464GB.

I'm therefore going to 'clone' rather than fresh Windows, as updating drivers and stuff can take an age with the latter as I recall from previous experience.

Before I do, should I first carry out a 'clean', a 'de-frag', a what?

And with Macrium, I basically select ALL the partitions and clone them, and worry about 'expanding' the partition on the SSD afterwards?

Many thanks for any tips here.

 

[USAFRet]

No need to 'defrag', nor do you do that with an SSD anyway.

For the size thing, the steps above has a section referring to that.
"Cloned Partition Properties" , and you adjust/expand the size of the target before you click the Go button.

 

[Frooby]

Thanks USAFRet.

Could I ask your guidance on the Macrium results here, please - what should I be looking to tweak before 'go'?

 

[USAFRet]

Destination, partition 4.
As shown, that will be the same size as the partition on the source.
This will leave 11.18GB empty at the end, due to the slightly differing drive sizes.

Click on Cloned Partition Properties, and see if you can stretch that 464.47GB partition.

 

[Frooby]

Clicked on that, but couldn't see how to stretch that partition. This is the resulting image:

If I go ahead and clone it as it stands, can't this partition be expanded on the SSD afterwards with a disc partition prog?

Cheers.

 

[USAFRet]

Try this:

Clear off all the partitions on the Destination.
Drag all the partitions except the C Partition, to the Destination. So those will be the first 4 from left to right.
Then, drag the C partition down to the Destination.

That should allow resizing of that to include that remaining 11GB space.

 

[Frooby]

Fab.

Did that, and was then able to expand that partition to take over that 11GB.

Cloning now underway...

 

[Frooby]

All done - thanks so much for your help

I now have the old C: drive (371 free of 464), a new D: Recovery (485MB free of 498) and the main cloned drive on the SSD, E: 391 free of 475.

Q... Can I simply re-label the drives to make the SSD the C: drive so it's (a) obviously the main drive, and (b) I don't need to swap drive sequence in the BIOS? (And make the soon-to-be-wiped HDD into E Ie - swap their labels around. Or do I need to change the boot sequence in BIOS first?

The D: Recovery drive is a 'new' appearance, but I guess was originally just part of C: - an extra partition in there? This drive will be added to as stuff like restore points are made?

Cheers.

 

[USAFRet]

A properly done clone operation, the NEW drive IS the C.
Whatever drive Windows boots from is seen as the C.

And you can't swap drive letters around like that.
You cannot remove the C label from whatever drive/partition it is currently running from.


At the end of the process, did you:
power off
Physically disconnect or remove the old drive
Allow the system to power up from only the new?

This is a required step. If you failed to do this, you may need to redo the clone operation.

And also, the boot order. New drive first.

So do this now:
Power off
Remove the old drive
Power up
Does it boot correctly?

The D drive letter can simply be removed in Disk Management.

 

[Frooby]

Oops - I did power off, but didn't remove the old drive. Will do that now :-(

 

[Frooby]

Old HDD removed, booted up - 'couldn't find OS' - went into F2, check drives, drive ok, exit, booted and I have C: (SSD) and D: Recovery.

So now I shut down, reinsert old HDD and hope that comes up as E:?

Here goes...

 

[USAFRet]

Old HDD removed, booted up - 'couldn't find OS' - went into F2, check drives, drive ok, exit, booted and I have C: (SSD) and D: Recovery.

So now I shut down, reinsert old HDD and hope that comes up as E:?

Here goes...

Show a screencap of the Disk Management, while it is running.

 

[Frooby]

Phew! All seemingly good

I'll give it a day and then wipe the old (now E drive.

When you say I can remove the D: (Recovery) drive using Disk Management, what will I do with it? Isn't it a useful facility? Or is 'Recovery' just a partition in the main C: drive?

Thanks for your patience.

 

[USAFRet]

Phew! All seemingly good

I'll give it a day and then wipe the old (now E drive.

When you say I can remove the D: (Recovery) drive using Disk Management, what will I do with it? Isn't it a useful facility? Or is 'Recovery' just a partition in the main C: drive?

Thanks for your patience.

Often, in a change like this, the System Reserved partition (boot partition), or Recovery partition, gets mistakenly assigned a drive letter.
That partition needs to exist. It does NOT need (or want) a drive letter.

In Disk Management, right click that partition.
Select Change drive letter or path
Remove that drive letter.

 

[Frooby]

Thanks again.

Hmmmm, it appears in This PC (C:, D: Recovery, and E, but in Disk Management there's only Disk 0 (which contains E and Disk 1 (with C. That recovery partition (Partition 1) doesn't have a letter, but what's more the only right-click option is 'help'.

Help