ssd os migration?

[Leoni Giron]

I know there are many answers on this topic but i could never find an exact one for a particular question. I have a 1tb hdd already and what I want is to get an ssd for a boot drive and certain programs however is there a way to set an ssd as the main drive yet keep all my games/programs on my old hdd without having to reinstall them to run.

 

[WyomingKnott]

No, there is not. The installation processes for most programs make changes to the system, writing some libraries or code to shared areas and making entries in the system registry. If you do a new install on the SSD, that instance of the OS will not have the appropriate parts of the programs you installed.

And if you clone the OS to the SSD, it will still have pointers to stuff on the wrong drive.

You will have to re-install most or all of your stuff.


To be fair, there are applications that will try to do this as you move from one machine to another, like this: http://www.laplink.com/index.php/specialpages/Branded-PCmover-012014 . IMHO, they are a decent start but can't do a complete job. You also need both systems up, which won't work in your case.

 

[USAFRet]

By far the best way is a clean install on the new SSD. There are a couple of applications that claim to be able to migrate 'just the OS', but that ends up as actually more work than a clean install.

 

[alexoiu]

I'd say maybe, depending on programs. But most of them rely on registry settings and various files saved in system folders.
You can install Windows on the SSD and test, see if there are programs working.