upgrading to intel from amd

[osode12]

I currently have a amd 6300 and gtx 1060 6gb. I want to upgrade to a i5 7600 with a MSI - B250M PRO-VD Micro ATX motherboard and G.Skill - NT Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory. How can i backup my current hard drive to not lose my data. I have two 1tb hard drives one with my os and all my files and one drive with nothing on it. I also might get a ssd for windows if it is worth buying as well. Please Help.

 

[chemmajorp53]

You don't want to buy a Kaby Lake i5 with the skylake parts out, you'll get the same performance from an i3 8100 for less. If I were you I'd wait a couple weeks for availability and get an i5 8400. As far as saving your data, what are you trying to save? If it's just documents, pictures, videos, etc. then you can just copy them from HDD 1 to HDD 2 and call it a day. If you want to save your program data then you'll have to save a backup of your system to the 2nd hard drive and copy it over when you reinstall windows on the other hard drive, save the specific data to you want to a flashdrive and put it all back in the right folders later, or back it up to the cloud. Yes an SSD is 100% worth buying, just make sure it's at least 240GB.

 

[coozie7]

What do you mean by 'data'?
Normal documents, photos, videos, even browser favourites can just be copied to the spare HDD for security, game saves will be trickier because you'll need to find them first, but they can also be copied to the spare HDD.

Adding an SSD for Windows and a few heavily used programs will speed things up no end, not just boot/load/save times but it'll make the whole system feel more responsive BUT...
You cannot transfer just Windows to the SSD, only copy ( clone ) the entire 'C' drive either by purchasing a large enough SSD or by shrinking the 'C' drive partition so it's smaller than the SSD capacity.

With such a large upgrade in mind I'll suggest that with the system as it is you:
Download and save to DVD or USB drive all the latest drivers for your new motherboard and graphics card.
Format the spare HDD in AHCI mode then transfer your data/files to it.
Format the SSD in AHCI mode.
Do the CPU/MB/RAM upgrade, installing the SSD at the same time but leave both HDDs disconnected.
Boot and install Windows from your install media to the SSD.
Once Windows has done its thing, install the drivers you saved out.
Reboot and check everything is OK.
Once you're happy, power down, connect the backup HDD and boot the system.
Assuming all is well run the system and allow Windows to do its many, many, many updates but leave the other HDD disconnected, that way it'll never run the risk of being corrupted and your data/files will always be safe.

 

[osode12]

I heard that the coffee lake CPU’s have had issues and the motherboards are more expensive. For my data I guess I’ll start fresh and just backup photos and documents. How can I do a fresh install of windows on a ssd on my pc once i install my new motherboard and cpu.