HDD to SSD question

[MagnesiumDew]

I have a 2 TB hard drive, which I have slowly filled up over the past 3 years. At christmas, it hit it's limit, and now my days have come down to deciding which games that I can get rid of to make space for others.
I would like to migrate to having an SSD, in conjunction with the hard drive, to help with boot times, while I will eventually buy another HDD at some point in the future.
The problem that I have is that, I cannot afford to wipe my hard drive, at any cost. The internet speeds here are terrible, and the hard drive has, naturally, been personalized to my preference since I have had it. If there is no way to do this without wiping the SSD, then there is no way that I am going to do it. And so comes my question;

Is it possible to transfer to an SSD (a smaller capacity one at that) and have the OS run of that, while maintaining my HDD too?

Thanks for any help, I have looked at several forum posts, but none mention the capacity problem.

Thanks again
Joe

 

[rgd1101]

Sound like you need to buy a 2TB ext drive. You need to backup data anyway.

 

[KCRic74]

There are some programs out there that can move only the OS. I've actually been going through this same issue. There's more to it than a simple OS migration but for the most part it's fairly simple. I used AOMIE Backupper (the free trial works just fine). You can do an OS migration or clone an entire drive. It will clone from a larger drive to a smaller one as well. Common sense applies with that. If the amount of data is more than the size of the destination drive it won't work.

I didn't use the OS migration option. I did a clone (don't select "sector by sector" that clone empty space and sectors marked as bad). If you decide to use the clone option, click on advanced options in the lower left and you can actually select what folders/files to copy or leave alone. Lastly, have a USB drive or CD handy. You'll want to make a bootable disc and run AOMIE from that by selecting your USB or CD/DVD at startup.

Hope this helps. I'm at work so I don't have much time to elaborate more right now.

 

[MagnesiumDew]

Sound like you need to buy a 2TB ext drive. You need to backup data anyway.

I have got the games library (which represents about 1.5TB) backed up, but its just the whole idea of downloading loads of stuff that would be nightmarish on 4Mbps

There are some programs out there that can move only the OS. I've actually been going through this same issue. There's more to it than a simple OS migration but for the most part it's fairly simple. I used AOMIE Backupper (the free trial works just fine). You can do an OS migration or clone an entire drive. It will clone from a larger drive to a smaller one as well. Common sense applies with that. If the amount of data is more than the size of the destination drive it won't work.

I didn't use the OS migration option. I did a clone (don't select "sector by sector" that clone empty space and sectors marked as bad). If you decide to use the clone option, click on advanced options in the lower left and you can actually select what folders/files to copy or leave alone. Lastly, have a USB drive or CD handy. You'll want to make a bootable disc and run AOMIE from that by selecting your USB or CD/DVD at startup.

Hope this helps. I'm at work so I don't have much time to elaborate more right now.

This sounds hopeful, I assume it automatically detects which folders to copy if you only want to move the OS. I will look up how to create a boot drive, since my experience with them has been pretty miserable. Thanks for the program, I will have a look when I get the chance to order an SSD (now that its only £50 for 240Gb).

Thanks for the quick responses