[SOLVED] HDD upgrading

[zhineman]

Hello,

I'm sorry if this has been answered somewhere but I looked and couldn't find it. Recently, I upgraded my PC by purchasing new components and switching my OS from running on an HDD to an SSD. Getting windows moved over to the SSD and setting that as the primary boot drive has been completed and with relative ease. I also bought an upgraded version of my HDD for storage purposes. The newer one has better speeds, but otherwise is the exact same brand and storage size.

My question is this - If I clone the old HDD to the new HDD, will the programs (games mostly) run more efficiently than they did on the old drive even though I have copied all files/settings etc? I am looking for better performance on the new HDD, which I assume would happen by default because of the faster speeds, but I want to be sure I don't need to reinstall games and such on it in order to utilize it's better performance.

I hope this makes sense. If you need more details or something please let me know!

Thanks in advance

 

[USAFRet]

Unless there is something wrong with the old HDD, moving that to a new one won't be noticeable.

What specific drives, and what tells you "faster"?

 

[USAFRet]

And moving data to a new secondary drive would involve no change of 'settings', other than insuring that the new drive has the same dive letter as the old one did.
And of course all the files/folders are in the same construction and paths.

 

[zhineman]

And moving data to a new secondary drive would involve no change of 'settings', other than insuring that the new drive has the same dive letter as the old one did.
And of course all the files/folders are in the same construction and paths.

Thanks for the swift response. So when I complete cloning the drive, will the program still fail looking to boot from C:// if that is no longer the name of the drive it is housed within?

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for the swift response. So when I complete cloning the drive, will the program still fail looking to boot from C:// if that is no longer the name of the drive it is housed within?

OK wait....thats a whole other thing.
I thought you were just changing one secondary drive for another. The C drive not involved in any way.

 

[zhineman]

OK wait....thats a whole other thing.
I thought you were just changing one secondary drive for another. The C drive not involved in any way.

Correct. The C drive is now the SSD. Which only contains Windows, a couple of games and a couple of apps on it. These were all things that were originally on my HDD. I have since uninstalled them through their filepaths on that drive. What is left (some games, pictures, music, etc) I would like to stay on the new storage HDD. The new one is just a few years newer version of the original HDD.

My main goal here is to find out (where games are concerned) if I would need to uninstall all the games that are currently on the old HDD when I clone it onto the newer one.

 

[USAFRet]

Just to verify:

Existing state:
C - Current OS drive
D - old HDD
E - New HDD

C (OS) and D (old HDD) are the ones currently in use.

Desired end state:
C - Current OS
D - New HDD
E - Old HDD

New HDD will hold whatever was on Old HDD.


Correct?

All you need do is copy the full contents of Old HDD to New HDD.
Then swap the drive letters around so that New HDD is D, and Old HDD is Anything Else.
Them, delete the contents (format) of Old HDD and use it as desired.

 

[popatim]

I think you are telling us you moved windows to the SSD by copying the folder over from the HDD.. .

Is that right?

 

[zhineman]

I think you are telling us you moved windows to the SSD by copying the folder over from the HDD.. .

Is that right?

No I installed windows fresh on the SSD via a flash drive. The above post regarding the "end state" is correct, that is what I plan to have. However - what I am trying to find out is if I clone the old HDD to the new HDD and try to run a program, is it going to fail forcing me to have to resintall all games and programs on the newer HDD? If so, I'd rather spend the time and uninstall them before cloning the drive.

 

[USAFRet]

For the secondary drive, the OS on the SSD does not care.
As long as the new drive has the same drive letter as the old one did, and as long as all the files and folders are still in the same path...it will work.

You do NOT need to, nor should you, 'uninstall' from the old drive first.

Clone, or a simple copy/paste from old HDD to new HDD.
As long as it ends up with the same drive letter, all is good.