Question Cloning just OS to an SSD?

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iiSlashr

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Mar 10, 2019
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So I've had my SSD for a few months now, but I keep putting off trying to transfer my OS to it. For now, it's got SLOBS, Origin, Apex, and Discord on it. I've got roughly 400GB of space remaining on it, but have more than that on my current (and very old) hard drive. Is there a way to just transfer Win10 without the rest?
 
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There is no way to clone or copy only the OS files unless ALL of the data you DON'T want is on other partitions on the same drive. You can exclude folders, but if you are talking about installed applications or games, no, you can't do that. They will all have registry entries and linked folders and nothing will work right. Your BEST option would be to back up everything important to a NEW drive, AND to your old drive, so that you don't lose any of it, and then do a clean install to the SSD.

UNLESS the total size of the C: and other partitions on the HDD is less than about 70% of the size of the SSD, it can't even be cloned to it, at all, without removing a lot of installed applications and games. What is the total size of your current used space on the C: partition?
 
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333 is EXACTLY 70%, and IMO that is cutting it too closely. Are there applications or games installed on the HDD that can be uninstalled to gain some more room? Have you performed any clean up actions to the OS to free up space?

I'd do all of the following and see if you can gain some additional breathing room.

How To - How to cleanup windows 10

If you are looking to clean up Windows 10 after an upgrade or clean install, or just as a good general maintenance priority, there are some things you can do to streamline operations and remove unwanted junk. Most of it is pretty standard, similar in nature to previous versions of Windows but...
forums.tomshardware.com forums.tomshardware.com
 
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So I just tried to clone my hard drive (with 300-ish gigs on it) to my 480g SSD, Macrium spat out an error, and my SSD seems to have just vanished. It's gone. I have no idea how, but I can't access or view it. Any ideas?
 
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first things first ask the admin to get access to bios and see if you have UEFI capable motherboard if you do and if it's on you wont see any drives detected, that's normal, second ...or first make sure windows 10 is loaded on a DVD, not USB drive, very important for gpt auto format during installation we dont want any mbr formatted ssd. ok if your bios is uefi capable turn it on put in win 10 disc and it will auto install and the only drive avail during installation will be the ssd. No need to make a disc image and restore to the ssd anymore but if you wanna go that route make sure to set bios to legacy uefi.

edit

and if you need to go into disk partition management do in command prompt and gpt format the ssd it will still be Ntfs but with gpt instead of mbr.
 
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Zer0b1ade said:
first things first ask the admin to get access to bios and see if you have UEFI capable motherboard if you do and if it's on you wont see any drives detected, that's normal, second ...or first make sure windows 10 is loaded on a DVD, not USB drive, very important for gpt auto format during installation we dont want any mbr formatted ssd. ok if your bios is uefi capable turn it on put in win 10 disc and it will auto install and the only drive avail during installation will be the ssd. No need to make a disc image and restore to the ssd anymore but if you wanna go that route make sure to set bios to legacy uefi.

edit

and if you need to go into disk partition management do in command prompt and gpt format the ssd it will still be Ntfs but with gpt instead of mbr.
Click to expand...
DVD vs USB?
No.
 
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DVD vs USB has literally NOTHING to do, AT ALL, with whether the system installs a GPT or MBR partition. It has everything to do with whether Compatibility support module is disabled and whether the OS type in the secure boot settings is set to "Windows 8/10" or "Other". In some cases there may actually be a setting that specifies UEFI mode vs Legacy.

Not sure where you ever got the idea that the installation media had anything to do with it, but like USAFRet said, it doesn't.
 
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Darkbreeze said:
DVD vs USB has literally NOTHING to do, AT ALL, with whether the system installs a GPT or MBR partition. It has everything to do with whether Compatibility support module is disabled and whether the OS type in the secure boot settings is set to "Windows 8/10" or "Other". In some cases there may actually be a setting that specifies UEFI mode vs Legacy.

Not sure where you ever got the idea that the installation media had anything to do with it, but like USAFRet said, it doesn't.
Click to expand...
if you make a USB bootable via bootsect64 you create a mbr partition on the USB drive requiring the uefi to be turned off.
A DVD copy is burned as uefi bootable disc making the install user friendly allowing the DVD to been read in uefi.

if you load a USB flash drive under mbr via bootsect64 you would have to go into command prompt during installation and gpt format the drive and that is considered a legacy uefi install.

of course you can make a gpt formatted USB I supposed but not to many ppl know about gpt.

older mobo with no nvme ssd slot usually have the os version then beneath that is the uefi boot options. if your system is slotted for nvme all you have is uefi/legacy/and off.

I got gpt info l from the windows server support page, and there was no guide at the time I was installing win 10 on the NVME. Took time 2 weeks to do a full UEfI windows install because l tried every other way first. The DVD rom was the easiest.
 
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GPT and MBR have nothing to do with the media type. They have to do with the BIOS settings telling Windows WHAT TYPE of partition to create and install windows on. I don't know where you get the idea that the partition type of the installation media has anything at all to do with with what type of partition Windows will create, but it does not.
 
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