[SOLVED] Make SSD OS boot drive instead of HDD

[jtrueppel]

Hello all!

I just got a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250gb SSD so my OS can boot faster. Im generally confused on how to transfer my boot OS, which is on my HDD, to boot from my new SSD. People have said to avoid migrating as it can underperform & loose data?... which i would want to avoid. I've already followed this tutorial: https://bit.ly/2GehrsA but i didn't find any luck, unless i may have done something wrong? Videos, step-by-step or images would be very helpful! Thank you in advance!

 

[USAFRet]

How much space is consumed on your current C drive?

And yes, migrating from HDD to NVMe drive can be problematic.

 

[jtrueppel]

How much space is consumed on your current C drive?

Currently 769 gb is consumed on my C drive.

 

[CountMike]

Same way as putting an elephant in a match box, take matches out first !!!
But seriously, you can't do that, best way is to install windows again on the SSD as there's more to it than just because of space.

 

[Quanticriver]

i second count mike

 

[USAFRet]

Currently 769 gb is consumed on my C drive.

That is absolutely not going to work.
To migrate into a 250GB drive, your actual consumed space needs to be below 200GB.


When conditions are right, migrating can be a good solution.
This is not the case here.

 

[jtrueppel]

Same way as putting an elephant in a match box, take matches out first !!!
But seriously, you can't do that, best way is to install windows again on the SSD as there's more to it than just because of space.

Will reinstalling windows to my SSD delete all my data on my computer? Thank you for the response by the way!

 

[USAFRet]

Will reinstalling windows to my SSD delete all my data on my computer? Thank you for the response by the way!

Done properly, no it won't.
But your existing applications will not be usable. They need to be reinstalled.

Steam games and similar can probably be worked around.

But a new install on the new SSD will absolutely need a reinstall of all your applications.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[jtrueppel]

Done properly, no it won't.
But your existing applications will not be usable. They need to be reinstalled.

Steam games and similar can probably be worked around.

But a new install on the new SSD will absolutely need a reinstall of all your applications.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

Knowing this information, it would probably be the best & easiest to backup everything on an external hard drive before doing a reinstall of windows? I appreciate the link as well!

 

[CountMike]

Knowing this information, it would probably be the best & easiest to backup everything on an external hard drive before doing a reinstall of windows? I appreciate the link as well!

You should have a full backup anyway but to preempt any problems, just disconnect old drive until you finish installation on new one. That would leave your old drive intact and you can connect it after.