Transferring or Accessing data from another hard drive

[Austin1346]

I currently have a 1tb WD Blue that's 95% full and is ~6 years old. So, I have a Samsung 850 Evo coming in the mail tonight. What I intend on doing is leaving my old hard drive in, same slot and everything, and then just plugging my SSD in and then installing windows OS onto it.

If I do what is said above, will I be able to boot from my fresh windows install on my ssd and then pull files from my old hard drive? I can't really transfer everything at once because all of my important files are scattered all over my PC and would take ages to compile them all in one file.

If not, how should I go about doing this? I have years of files saved that are related to game development/school.
Anyways, thanks for reading everyone.

 

[atljsf]

once the samsung gets here, unplug the power sata cable from the wd hard disk

then install windows on the ssd

turn off the pc, then plug the sata power cable on the wd hard disk

set pc to boot form the samsung

once you reach the desktop installed on the ssd, you can move files from your old desktop to the new by copying the entire user or just the things on desktop, on my documents, stuff like that and then delete on the wd the windows and the other folders you don't need anymore, leave the rest untouched

this way the second hard disk will be a storage disk and the ssd will be boot and programs disk

 

[boosted1g]

Just for simplicity I would unplug your HDD and plug in your SSD and then install windows (make sure bios is UEFI mode and format as GPT, if you had win 7 and upgraded to 10 you may still be legacy bios and mbr).

Then once windows is installed plug your hard drive back in.

There is no easy way to remove all of windows from your old magnetic drive (at least while keeping your old files). You can delete the windows and program files folders and that should free up a good amount of space though.

Ideally I would try to borrow an external or find some other way to get all of your files off the drive, then format it.

Really you should have 1 more hard drive anyways for backups. A 2tb drive would allow to backup the files of the 1tb drive, as well as make full disk images of the SSD. Macrium reflect is great for the disk imaging.

 

[Austin1346]

Just for simplicity I would unplug your HDD and plug in your SSD and then install windows (make sure bios is UEFI mode and format as GPT, if you had win 7 and upgraded to 10 you may still be legacy bios and mbr).

Then once windows is installed plug your hard drive back in.

There is no easy way to remove all of windows from your old magnetic drive (at least while keeping your old files). You can delete the windows and program files folders and that should free up a good amount of space though.

Ideally I would try to borrow an external or find some other way to get all of your files off the drive, then format it.

Really you should have 1 more hard drive anyways for backups. A 2tb drive would allow to backup the files of the 1tb drive, as well as make full disk images of the SSD. Macrium reflect is great for the disk imaging.

once the samsung gets here, unplug the power sata cable from the wd hard disk

then install windows on the ssd

turn off the pc, then plug the sata power cable on the wd hard disk

set pc to boot form the samsung

once you reach the desktop installed on the ssd, you can move files from your old desktop to the new by copying the entire user or just the things on desktop, on my documents, stuff like that and then delete on the wd the windows and the other folders you don't need anymore, leave the rest untouched

this way the second hard disk will be a storage disk and the ssd will be boot and programs disk

So this is what I'll do:
1) Unplug HDD and plug in SSD in the hard drive's old SATA port.
2) Install windows on SSD and get to desktop.
3) Shut off pc and plug in HDD to a new SATA port, while leaving the SSD in the old HDD SATA port.
4) Boot off of SSD and get to desktop once again
5) Start transfering stuff

I just want to be 100% sure that I'm not going to mess anything up so if either of you could tell me if my steps are wrong or if I missed something i'd really appreaciate it. Thanks!

 

[atljsf]

i wouldn0t change sata ports, not necesary, but you do need another sata cable to keep both disks connected

other than that, remember to set bios to boot from the ssd and enjoy your new ssd!

if you have doubts, remember, always do backups, always, no matter what