Using an SSD as boot-drive but using HDD for general programs/storage.

Tommy O

Honorable
Dec 25, 2013
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10,510
Hello!

I just got myself an 128 Gb SSD and I wanted to use it as my boot-disk for Windows 7 and store a few frequently used programs on it. It was obviously way too small to store all my many other games and programs and thus I kept these programs on my regular HDD and only migrated the OS and a few games onto the SSD.

However when I try to use the SSD as a boot-drive it loads the OS and the few programs on the SSD, but not the programs that are kept on the HDD. When I try to start these programs kept on the HDD Windows simply tells me that the shortcut is broken. The programs just won't boot, since they are stored on the HDD. The programs stored on the SSD work just fine though.

How do I fix this? I've searched around a bit and it seems like the only option I've got in order to fix this is to format my HDD and make it "fresh". But this HDD has got tons of stuff stored on it and formating it would take way too much time. Is there a simpler way or am I stuck?

Thanks in advance



 
You are not stuck but you will have to bite the bullet as there's no alternative. Those applications that you did not migrate to your SSD will have to be re-installed from scratch in order to create the correct paths in the Registry of the Windows installation on the SSD (the old paths will already be in the Registry but they are now invalid because the drive letter has changed, which is why those apps won't run).

The best plan now is to re-format the HDD before re-installing the apps which you didn't migrate.