Adding my first ever SSD (to my laptop)

chris_r · 22 Nov 2018 at 14:53

Hi guys,

Running Win 10 on my 1tb internal laptop HDD, next week i will be installing my first ever SSD into the laptop (using the dvd drive and and enclosure)

Could someone point me in the right direction of the best way to get the OS moved over to the SSD.

As for my programs, i would only want a selected few on the SSD itself, for example, Photoshop, 3D programs and any other heavy ones.

Thanks all

Meddling-Monk · 22 Nov 2018 at 18:29

Cloning the HDD to the SSD maybe? Via Macrium Reflect?

But if your HDD is larger than the SSD, you'll need to shrink it first down to an equivalent size so that the HDD and SSD are "identical" for the cloning process. That's what I needed to do when I changed my HDD 512GB to a 256 SSD on a secondary system.

nashathedog · 23 Nov 2018 at 10:35

I recently grabbed a new Samsung SSD drive and Samsung have some good software for migrating your OS content to one of their drives. I don't know if you can use it to clone onto a non Samsung drive but I was able to clone my OS from an Intel drive to the new Samsung drive with no issues and a minimum of hassle, It's the first time I've tried to do it & I was surprised by how simple it was. The software's called the Samsung SSD Data Migration software for consumer SSD.

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/ (scroll down for Migration software)

fezster · 23 Nov 2018 at 11:16

Macrium Reflect here - so easy to do, as long as your target drive has enough space. It allows you to resize partitions from the image, so it doesn't matter if your source drive had more capacity than was used.

Meddling-Monk · 23 Nov 2018 at 19:02

fezster said:
Macrium Reflect here - so easy to do, as long as your target drive has enough space. It allows you to resize partitions from the image, so it doesn't matter if your source drive had more capacity than was used.

Ahhh, I did NOT know about the resizing of the image on the fly. Nice. Unfortunately for me my 512GB drive was near full, so resizing was an exercise in futility in that regard (you can't fit 512GB onto 256GB not matter how hard you try

), so it was delete en masse at that point for me, and since I was still in Windows, might as well shrink it at the same time. But very cool to know.

Oh, OP. Remember to check BIOS settings on boot drive order as well, as you don't want to be booting off the old HDD instead of the SSD since they're both installed at same time, and to also - if needed, make drive partitions active/inactive/boot etc.