How do I transfer everything from the HDD including the OS to sdd ?/

[fuggles]

I want to remove everything off my 120gb hard drive which is 9 years old

to my SSD including the operating system windows 7 64 bit

what do I do ?

 

[almyz125]

You could make an image of your hard drive and the write that to the sdd. Hirens Boot CD has tools to do this. Or if you have access to Norton Ghost you could use that.

 

[Onus]

I have used Acronis True Image Home to do that several times, all successful.

 

[cadder]

Option 1 is to connect both drives to the machine and use cloning software to clone from the original drive to the new drive.

Option 2 is to connect some other storage device to the computer, such as network server or external drive. Then make an image of the original drive and store it on the external drive. Now install the new drive and copy the disk image to it.

Most cloning software will do either option. If one of your drives is WD or Intel, you can download a version of Acronis from WD or Intel to do the operation. Or you can buy the program of your choice such as Norton Ghost or Acronis. Or there are various free programs that you can get.

You can get additional information from this thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/33902-63-clone-windows

 

[ram1009]

I highly recommend a transfer kit made by a company called Apricorn. It consists of a proprietary dongle and some software. Costs about $20 on Newegg. BTW, I've seen some ugly comments about Acronis 2012.

 

[fuggles]

meh

I just installed the OS on the ssd

plugged in my hard drive

and dragged and dropped a few files

 

[cadder]

meh

I just installed the OS on the ssd

plugged in my hard drive

and dragged and dropped a few files

This is the easiest way and generally the way that is recommended first. If you have apps that you don't want to or can't reinstall, then you may have to go with cloning. Or if you have a laptop and you don't want to go through finding and downloading and installing all of the drivers, then cloning is the way to go. I have done this on 2 different laptops. One I just reinstalled but then it was a major pain getting all of the drivers installed so everything would work. On the other one I cloned from one drive to the other and it was very easy. I just received a new drive to put in my little travel laptop, I'm going to try cloning it first. The new drive is an Intel so I can download their migration software (by Acronis) and use it.

My wife and my daughter both have laptops that could benefit from SSD's. I would not even begin to ask either of them to start reinstalling and reconfiguring all of their stuff. My wife's laptop came with trial versions of MS Office installed and she activated it with a credit card before I could tell her not to. So she already spent the money on the software and if I reinstalled the OS I would have no way to reinstall and activate that software.

 

[LordConrad]

I would clone your hard drive onto the SSD. I've used Acronis True Image to clone hard drives to SSDs on three separate occasions without problems, but any imaging software should work fine. A fresh install never hurts, but it's not required.

 

[cadder]

I installed an Intel 320 80GB SSD into my laptop today. Intel has their own version of Acronis but it wouldn't clone from a large partition on the mechanical drive to the smaller SSD. I downloaded Easeus Total Backup and it did the trick. I had previously bought an external 2.5" USB drive enclosure. I put the SSD in that, connected to the laptop, downloaded and installed Easeus TB, ran it and told it to do the complete clone. A little over an hour later it was finished. I took out the mechanical hard drive, put in the SSD, turned the machine on and it booted just fine.