Moving to an SSD and new HDD

[Aldo1Raine]

Hi All,

I've never switched storage drives before, so I'd like to make sure I have this down after looking over the forums.

I going to ditch my old slow HDD for an new SSD and faster HDD.

First, I already have pictures/music/video and such backed up on an external drive.

I plan on making a USB backup of windows 7 since all I have in an upgrade disk

I will take out the old HDD, put in the ssd, install windows from the USB drive, install the new HDD.....and I should be all set, other than re installing programs and drivers.

Sound good? missing any steps?

 

[mad-max79]

I would backup the complete USER folder including hidden folders like APPDATA which holds many settings of your current installed apps.

 

[ngrego]

It is important to set SATA port to AHCI for the SSD before installing!
Windows 7 will take care of the rest during installation.

I personally cloned the drive and transfered the image over to the SSD. Many said it is not safe to do so but I went ahead anyway, it has been running for over a year now without any problems. The whole transfer took me about a half hour to complete.