Need Tips for Moving Windows 8.1 from 1Tb HDD to 128 GB SSD.

[1Rab]

Explain it to me like I'm 5. I am about to get a 128 Gb SSD. I have Windows 8 on a CD. I want to move my OS and Battlefield 4 to the SSD. My concerns are. How do I move Windows 8 without buying it again? Will I have to upgrade to 8.1 again? Will I lose all my tweaks and settings? Will I lose all my Drivers? How do I remove Windows 8 from my HDD without losing all my music, pictures and documents and without a backup? Can I install only Battlefield 4 to the SSD or do I have to move all of my Origin games over? Will 128Gb be enough for Windows 8 and Battlefield 4/Origin? I plan on getting this one since I want to stay under $100. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211602

 

[DarkSable]

Why would you think you would have to buy it again? The licence for windows is tied to your motherboard... and since you have windows 8, you can always unlicense your computer as it and reinstall with your key on a different computer.

That being said, DO NOT TRY TO JUST MOVE THE INSTALL. That will cause a LOT of issues. Instead, here's what you want to do. First, back up all the data (documents, save games, anything like that) to an external drive. Then unplug your hard drive, and plug in the SSD - make sure it's on a SATA III connection if you have it. Then put in the windows 8 CD, and select 'clean install.' Go through that process, then ONLY AFTER you have windows completely updated to 8.1, with all drivers and security patches, shut it down, and put your hard drive back in. Then format the hard drive and move your data back to it.

Yes, you will have to download updates again. You will lose your settings. You will lose drivers. But really, that's not a big deal; they don't take that long to set up again.

As for "How do I remove Windows 8 from my HDD without losing all my music, pictures and documents and without a backup?" ...give me a break. You use a backup. That's how that works - no other way is failsafe. If you don't want to get an external hard drive to move things to (which you should have anyways, because if your drive fails, you would lose everything on it), then you can take all the data you want to keep around very badly, compress it with a program like WinRAR, and send it to a cloud storage service like dropbox or google drive.

You will be able to install only battlefield 4 to the SSD, but you won't see much of a benefit from it. The reason you would put a game on an SSD is to get rid of loading screens; that's not an issue in BF4. The only games I would recommend putting on an SSD are MMOs and single player games.

128GB will be plenty for Windows 8 and a couple games, yes. However, that's a cruddy pick for an SSD... consider that Newegg is having a sale right now on the Samsung 840 EVO for $90, and you should leap on it.

 

[DonQuixoteMC]

I second everything DarkSable just said
Very good answer.

 

[JWS4436]

I am trying to (essentially) do the same thing here. I have everything backed up, I did a clean install on my 128G SSD and it boots just fine. I do diverge on the advice from Darksable on one point however. When I have the original HDD and my SSD in the machine together, Widows reuses to acknowledge the HDD (or SSD). The BIOS sees both and I can select to boot from either but when I do, the opposite drive is not seen. At this point, I have two bootable disks in the system at the same time and Windows gags on that!

I need a tool to repartition the original HDD (partitioned as GPT) to a single partition as NTFS so Windows will allow it. That is where I am in my process.

As a side issue, for those of you that are curious, I had the interesting situation where I had Windows 8 installed (clean) on both a HDD and SSD. When both were in my laptop, I could boot from either one via the BIOS. I timed the boot times just to see how the SSD improved performance. My start time was when I hit the return key (while in the BIOS) after selecting the drive to boot from. The stop time was when Windows displayed the Start menu tiles. The shutdown time was started from when I clicked "shutdown" to where the power light went out. Here are the timings:

SSD boot: 7.1 seconds
SSD shutdown: 7.5 seconds
HDD boot: 12.41 seconds
HDD shutdown: 16.9 seconds

My HDD is a Toshiba MQ01ABD100
My SSD is a Plextor PX-128M5S

Is saving 5 seconds on boot worth all this aggravation? Most likely not but then I will have bragging rights if I get this to work!

 

[DarkSable]

JWS4436, you have to format and initialize the drive using diskpart in CMD.

I'm surprised that the hard drive performed that quickly... wait. No I'm not, you were using windows 8, which cheats when it shuts down. It doesn't actually just shut down, it turns off and then boots the kernel, so it's more like resuming from hibernation than anything else... and going to the time when the screen shuts off is unreliable in this case because it keeps working after the fact.

Also, SSDs give you a whole bunch of advantages other than just the boot time. Just saying. IMMENSELY better battery life, a smoother desktop experience, quicker-opening programs...

 

[Hilleboe]

Why would you think you would have to buy it again? The licence for windows is tied to your motherboard... and since you have windows 8, you can always unlicense your computer as it and reinstall with your key on a different computer.

That being said, DO NOT TRY TO JUST MOVE THE INSTALL. That will cause a LOT of issues. Instead, here's what you want to do. First, back up all the data (documents, save games, anything like that) to an external drive. Then unplug your hard drive, and plug in the SSD - make sure it's on a SATA III connection if you have it. Then put in the windows 8 CD, and select 'clean install.' Go through that process, then ONLY AFTER you have windows completely updated to 8.1, with all drivers and security patches, shut it down, and put your hard drive back in. Then format the hard drive and move your data back to it.

Yes, you will have to download updates again. You will lose your settings. You will lose drivers. But really, that's not a big deal; they don't take that long to set up again.

As for "How do I remove Windows 8 from my HDD without losing all my music, pictures and documents and without a backup?" ...give me a break. You use a backup. That's how that works - no other way is failsafe. If you don't want to get an external hard drive to move things to (which you should have anyways, because if your drive fails, you would lose everything on it), then you can take all the data you want to keep around very badly, compress it with a program like WinRAR, and send it to a cloud storage service like dropbox or google drive.

You will be able to install only battlefield 4 to the SSD, but you won't see much of a benefit from it. The reason you would put a game on an SSD is to get rid of loading screens; that's not an issue in BF4. The only games I would recommend putting on an SSD are MMOs and single player games.

128GB will be plenty for Windows 8 and a couple games, yes. However, that's a cruddy pick for an SSD... consider that Newegg is having a sale right now on the Samsung 840 EVO for $90, and you should leap on it.

What do i do if i dont have the windows cd. It just came preinstalled on my pc?

 

[DarkSable]

What do i do if i dont have the windows cd. It just came preinstalled on my pc?

Start a new thread with your own question.
Long story short, you can use a key-grabber to find out what your key is, and then pay $5 in shipping to the manufacturers of your computer to get the CD.