[SOLVED] How to only move/remove OS from a HDD but keep files?

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ceriumin

ceriumin

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I am making a motherboard switch from a GA78lmt-usb3 r2 to a b450 with an am4 chipset (Gigabyte to Asus). And I am buying a 250GB SSD because I am running out of space on my 1tb hard drive and because I want faster read/write speeds. Since im making a motherboard switch HDD. I will need to reset my OS. Yes, its no problem, however I have got a dozen of games on my HDD and It would take ages to reinstall them all. Therefore I thought of moving my OS on the ssd/resetting and deleting my Os on my HDD and then installing a new one on my SSD but keeping my game files on the Hard Drive. Is it possible to do this? And how would i pull the task off? It would save me a lot of time to do this however even if it is not possible, I can just redownload everything but waste huge amounts of time. Thanks
 
Solution
USAFRet
ceriumin said:
They are all mostly Steam Games to be exact. Maybe 1 or 2 games which aren't steam but those i wouldn't mind reinstalling if i ran into any issues
Click to expand...
OK, for Steam games.
Do you have some other drive that can hold the entirety of the SteamApps folder?
If so, copy that whole folder off to some other location.
Wipe the drive in question.
With the new OS on the new hardware, you'll also be installing a new Steam client.
Once that is done, copy the contents of that folder back into the relevant location.
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Alabalcho

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You can't move / copy just the OS. You either mirror the whole drive (and it seems you can't), or start fresh with OS, then apps, games etc. I've read here that some game platforms allow for (after reinstallation) a change in game' storage location, so it really depends on your games.
 
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ceriumin

ceriumin

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Alabalcho said:
You can't move / copy just the OS. You either mirror the whole drive (and it seems you can't), or start fresh with OS, then apps, games etc. I've read here that some game platforms allow for (after reinstallation) a change in game' storage location, so it really depends on your games.
Click to expand...

Most of my games are steam games and all the games are of course in the program files location folder
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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ceriumin said:
They are all mostly Steam Games to be exact. Maybe 1 or 2 games which aren't steam but those i wouldn't mind reinstalling if i ran into any issues
Click to expand...
OK, for Steam games.
Do you have some other drive that can hold the entirety of the SteamApps folder?
If so, copy that whole folder off to some other location.
Wipe the drive in question.
With the new OS on the new hardware, you'll also be installing a new Steam client.
Once that is done, copy the contents of that folder back into the relevant location.
 
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Ichisuke

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You can only install the OS from fresh on the SSD. If you are using windows 10 you can actually just connect the old hdd to the new mobo etc and windows 10 will "reinitialize" its drivers and it will work ok(windows 7 for example just crash if you try something like that) but you'll be on the old drive... so well.... tha'ts not what you're looking for.
As they told you you can only install the OS from scratch. But you can link the old library to the new steam installation and you'll find your games still there. You then should delete everything else form the old drive.....
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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ceriumin said:
Is it really that simple? Wouldn't the boot screen tell me to select which windows 10 disk to boot from or wouldn't tjhings go corrupt? Thanks though!
Click to expand...
With the proper boot order, it WILL boot from the new SSD.
Navigating to the old files may be a pain (permissions, etc), but they will still be there.

It it MUCH easier to wipe that drive and move things back later.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Ichisuke said:
Ouch... I made it a lot of times and every time windows 10 did it's "first setup" and install the drivers for everything like a new computer etc.... Anyway that's not what he needs so...
Click to expand...
I've seen it work, I've seen it fail.
I've seen it sort of work, but chasing issues for weeks/months.
Just personal experience.

We'd all like it to be 100% plug and play. Sadly, it is not.
 
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ceriumin

ceriumin

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USAFRet said:
OK, for Steam games.
Do you have some other drive that can hold the entirety of the SteamApps folder?
If so, copy that whole folder off to some other location.
Wipe the drive in question.
With the new OS on the new hardware, you'll also be installing a new Steam client.
Once that is done, copy the contents of that folder back into the relevant location.
Click to expand...

I have an extra slow 500gb hard drive. Some games which load slow I'll plan on reinstalling them on the SSD such as GTA vice versa. But Thank You!
 
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