[SOLVED] How to make my 500gb SSD my boot drive without deleting any of my files off of my 2TB hdd

shadowXXe

Reputable
Jan 7, 2017
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o I just got a 500GB Kingston NVME SSD and I want to make it my boot drive, the only problem is whenever I try to migrate my OS from my HDD to my SSD, it says that the SSD is too small. I suspect this is because I have used all but 62GB of the free space on my HDD making the total size of all my files bigger than the capacity of my SSD. I was wondering if there was a way to make my SSD my boot drive but still keep all my important files on my HDD?
 
Solution
o I just got a 500GB Kingston NVME SSD and I want to make it my boot drive, the only problem is whenever I try to migrate my OS from my HDD to my SSD, it says that the SSD is too small. I suspect this is because I have used all but 62GB of the free space on my HDD making the total size of all my files bigger than the capacity of my SSD. I was wondering if there was a way to make my SSD my boot drive but still keep all my important files on my HDD?
You can either delete/move things off the HDD until it is less than 400GB. Or you can do a clean install without the HDD connected. You then have to reinstall most programs.

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
o I just got a 500GB Kingston NVME SSD and I want to make it my boot drive, the only problem is whenever I try to migrate my OS from my HDD to my SSD, it says that the SSD is too small. I suspect this is because I have used all but 62GB of the free space on my HDD making the total size of all my files bigger than the capacity of my SSD. I was wondering if there was a way to make my SSD my boot drive but still keep all my important files on my HDD?
You can either delete/move things off the HDD until it is less than 400GB. Or you can do a clean install without the HDD connected. You then have to reinstall most programs.
 
Solution

shadowXXe

Reputable
Jan 7, 2017
114
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4,765
You can either delete/move things off the HDD until it is less than 400GB. Or you can do a clean install without the HDD connected. You then have to reinstall most programs.
Once I have reinstalled windows onto my SSD can I copy over any of my frequently used applications from my HDD provided that they don't exceed the maximum storage of the SSD
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Once I have reinstalled windows onto my SSD can I copy over any of my frequently used applications from my HDD provided that they don't exceed the maximum storage of the SSD
If you do a clean OS install you have to reinstall most applications. They require Windows registry entries which have been deleted with the clean install. Stream games don't have to be redownloaded but things like MS Office would have to be reinstalled.
 
On your current HDD, how much of the used space is simply data folders, compared to space used by installed programs?

If your data folders occupy a significant amount of space there may be a way.
The samsung ssd migration aid is a C drive mover, not a clone which is a bit for bit copy.
It uses a proprietary version of clonix.
The app allows you to move your C drive, excluding a named list of data folders.
How this is done is explained in the app which you can download here:
You may have to pay for clonix that will work with your kingston ssd; the samsung app works only on samsung devices.