transferring Data over to new SSD

[Die_Toten]

I've already looked this question up and found several different answers but I just want to ask this question here and get an answer personally as a form of reassurance so I don't mess things up.

Here's a little background before I ask my question:

So I have a samsung 840 EVO ssd with 256 gb of storage. I've practically used up all the space on this SSD- I've already got a second HDD going. The purpose of the HDD was meant to just be a storage for backups, but now that I've pretty much used up all the space on my 840 EVO, games and even stuff for work have spilled over into the second drive. I considered just cloning what I had on my 840 evo to a new 500gb Samsung 850 EVO that I just recently purchased, but I decided it'd be waste to just use my 840 EVO as a dust collector.

So what I'm basically asking is this: how should I set my drives up? Right now, I'm thinking I should just keep what I have on the 256 gb SSD, and then take all the excess data that's spilled into the HDD and move it to the 500 gb SSD. There's also the secondary question of what the best way to move all this data? Can I just simply copy and paste all my steam games, word docs, excel files and whatnot over to the 500 gb SSD, or is there a more efficient method of transferring the excess data to the new 850 evo?

 

[coreydwillis2]

I would personally clone all of the data to the 500 GB 850 simply because it will give you more room on the primary drive, but it will also run faster than the 840. You could keep the 256GB drive as a secondary drive, or put some life into an older laptop you have around.

As far as copying data over, you can simply copy all of the Word, Excel files over, but Steam games will need to be reinstalled. I would use the Steam Backup tool for this purpose so you don't have to re-download them.

 

[USAFRet]

I would start by analyzing exactly what is on the current 250GB SSD.
If it is a lot of music/movies/downloads....move that stuff elsewhere. You mp3 playlist doesn't run any faster living on the SSD
How large is your Steam library?

WinDirStat can help with this.

Also, look into Restore points, hibernation, temp files, etc, etc.

 

[Die_Toten]

I dont have any movies or music on my desktop, I keep all that stuff on my laptop. I mostly just use my PC for gaming, and the size of my steam folder reflects that: it currently takes up 149 GB out of the 250GB. The size would be even greater if I actually had more space to download everything in my library.

I already went ahead and setup up the 850 EVO and cloned the data from the 840 onto it. Now, I'm assuming that the samsung cloning software that came with the SSD has already setup the 850 as my primary drive now, because the drive name has changed from X to C, whilst the 840 SSD has changed from C to G. There's also a new drive that's been setup called "System Reserve", which I didn't notice until after I cloned the 840 onto the 850.

I'd like to just use the 850 EVO as my primary drive, and use the 840 EVO to store more games from my expanding steam library. Would it be alright if I went ahead and just deleted everything on my 840 EVO?

 

[USAFRet]

Disconnect the old drive. See if it boots properly from just the new one.

If it all works from the new drive, wipe the old one.

 

[Die_Toten]

Disconnect the old drive. See if it boots properly from just the new one.

If it all works from the new drive, wipe the old one.

yep, it all works mighty fine. As for the 840 though, do I just go into disk management and just delete the volumes? And should I leave the system reserved drive on the 840 alone, or delete that as well?

 

[USAFRet]

If it is verified booting properly from ONLY the new drive, then you can wipe all partitions on the old drive.

 

[Die_Toten]

If it is verified booting properly from ONLY the new drive, then you can wipe all partitions on the old drive.

yep, I made sure. Unplugged the 840 and just booted with the 850. Thanks for the amazingly fast responses, I didn't expect to get answers this soon