How can I move Windows 10 and some games to my SSD?

[arcade15]

I have a 1TB Hard Drive with about 700GB of it used up. I decided to get a 250GB SSD to boot Windows 10 and put some games I play often on it, since the HDD is becoming sluggish. Looking around, people say I have to shrink down my HDD space to below 250GB and then clone the contents to the SSD completely.

Obviously, since I have 700GB used, 500Gb would mean getting rid of literally every game on my PC, and with a download speed of 0.5MB/s, I'm not going to reinstall all of the apps. It would take months, non-stop. Is there any way for me to clone across just windows 10, or will I have to download windows 10, get a new product key and boot off of my SSD? If so, will I have to remove windows 10 from the HDD and can I use it simply as storage for my apps and games? Will the games run off the hard drive still, but have windows 10 on the SSD? I'm pretty confused at this point in what I'm going to do, so someone please talk me through this! Please respond ASAP,

Cheers. ~

 

[Gam3r01]

You can register your windows 10 licence to your windows account, once you do that you can install win10 onto the SSD (a nice, clean install), the log in with windows and you are good to go.
You then just tell your game client (steam for example) where your games are located, and it will use them on the HDD. No need to reinstall or clone anything.

I personally think cloning is a bad idea, there is no reason to move all that data over, let alone delete data to do so.

 

[USAFRet]

and some games

That won't happen.

Cloning, when it works and the relevant sizes are OK, is fine.
Obviously, 700GB won't fit into a 250GB drive.

And you can't pick and choose which 'applications/games'.
And you can't clone only the OS. Doesn't work like that.

Your bet option is a clean install on the SSD. OS and applications.
How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10

Your Steam games do not have to be downloaded again.
Once you have the OS and applications, incl the Steam clien on the SSD, you can tell it where the Steam games exist on the old HDD.
Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

But yes, you need to remove the old OS from the HDD. It would just be sucking up space.

 

[USAFRet]

And no, you do NOT have to buy a new Win 10 license key.
Reinstall on the same system does not require a new license.

 

[arcade15]

and some games

That won't happen.

Cloning, when it works and the relevant sizes are OK, is fine.
Obviously, 700GB won't fit into a 250GB drive.

And you can't pick and choose which 'applications/games'.
And you can't clone only the OS. Doesn't work like that.

Your bet option is a clean install on the SSD. OS and applications.
How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10

Your Steam games do not have to be downloaded again.
Once you have the OS and applications, incl the Steam clien on the SSD, you can tell it where the Steam games exist on the old HDD.
Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

But yes, you need to remove the old OS from the HDD. It would just be sucking up space.

I'll definitely try this tomorrow. Hopefully it goes smoothly. I completely forgot I had a 1TB backup drive so I'll use that for the installation, and just hope it goes well.

 

[USAFRet]

I'll definitely try this tomorrow. Hopefully it goes smoothly. I completely forgot I had a 1TB backup drive so I'll use that for the installation, and just hope it goes well.

Discover the location of your SteamApps folder.
Copy that entire thing to the 1TB backup drive. And anything else you want from the original HDD.
That way, you can completely wipe the original drive once your OS is up and running from the new SSD.