Purchased a new SSD and want to make it my primary drive

[Myles Rowlands]

Hi everyone, my SSHD has been acting slow lately so I’ve purchased a 525gb ssd and would like to make it my boot drive and move my windows into it and to have a few of my games on the drive, thanks in advance

 

[Wayfall]

Well if I ever install a new master drive I literally just pull what I want off onto a external HDD then wipe the internal HDD and stick the new storage in then put the old HDD as my second storage.

 

[Neur0nauT]

So once you've installed the SSD.....boot to your Windows install media and it will run Windows setup. During which you can select your new SDD drive to install the OS to.

You can create a bootable Windows install media buy using the Windows Media Creation Tool

You can leave the current Windows install on the other drive for the time being.

With Windows installed on both drives, when you boot up your system, you will be prompted to which one you wish to boot to...you can change the default by following this guide.

If you are happy with your new Windows install, you could either reformat your SSHD fresh, or simply delete the Windows directory and program files from it to free up space....or you could just keep it as a backup OS drive.

 

[Myles Rowlands]

So once you've installed the SSD.....boot to your Windows install media and it will run Windows setup. During which you can select your new SDD drive to install the OS to.

You can create a bootable Windows install media buy using the Windows Media Creation Tool

You can leave the current Windows install on the other drive for the time being.

With Windows installed on both drives, when you boot up your system, you will be prompted to which one you wish to boot to...you can change the default by following this guide.

If you are happy with your new Windows install, you could either reformat your SSHD fresh, or simply delete the Windows directory and program files from it to free up space....or you could just keep it as a backup OS drive.

I've just installed the ssd, how do I boot to my windows install media?

 

[Neur0nauT]

Use the windows Media creation tool I linked in the previous post. It will download and create a bootable USB stick for you to boot with.

 

[Myles Rowlands]

Use the windows Media creation tool I linked in the previous post. It will download and create a bootable USB stick for you to boot with.

I got an error running the tool it said it was unable to run the tool on my pc

 

[Myles Rowlands]

Use the windows Media creation tool I linked in the previous post. It will download and create a bootable USB stick for you to boot with.

0x80070456 - 0xA0019

 

[Neur0nauT]

See this forum post for resolution to that error code.

 

[Myles Rowlands]

Hi (sorry I accidentally down voted your reply, it really did help) Can I just drag and drop my drivers and steam games over to the ssd or do I have to reinstall them?

 

[Neur0nauT]

Hi (sorry I accidentally down voted your reply, it really did help) Can I just drag and drop my drivers and steam games over to the ssd or do I have to reinstall them?

Best to get your system drivers reinstalled. (although Windows 10 should find 99% of them) Regarding your steam games, you could just repoint the install location to your old drive via your Steam settings. However if you want to have them running off the SSD, you can copy/paste or move them to the SSD, and they should re-verify after you've moved them. (make sure you have enough space on the SSD for the whole directory) You just need to specify the newly moved install directory i.e. "steamapps" within Steam settings.

Any non-steam games will probably require reinstall, as the registry entry for the installation will be now gone on the new OS.

If my explanation sounds a little bit too complicated, you can find an easier method here!

When I reformat my OS drive. I usually move everything within "My Documents" with the exception of the hidden AppData folder. This will ensure that any of your saved games and game configurations should be transferred too.