SSD upgrade question

Marshstyles · 14 Feb 2013 at 15:40

Hi,

Just had my new Samsung 840 500gb SSD delivered and it is going to be used for my games drive.

at the moment I have an old samsung F3 spinpoint 750gb where all my games/steam are installed to.

its about 350GB on installed game though I will probably uninstall a few things I don't play to speed up the transfer. so hopefully under 300GB when I'm done.

I'm wondering what is the best way to copy everything to my new SSD. I've been told/read that copying large files shortens the life of SSD's and was suggested that I clone it.

I've also read that when cloning the new harddrive should be larger that the older one? Is this true or does it simply mean there must be enough room for all the data to fit on the new harddrive?

Armageus · 14 Feb 2013 at 15:46

Marshstyles said:
I'm wondering what is the best way to copy everything to my new SSD. I've been told/read that copying large files shortens the life of SSD's and was suggested that I clone it.

I've also read that when cloning the new harddrive should be larger that the older one? Is this true or does it simply mean there must be enough room for all the data to fit on the new harddrive?

Cloning is generally used only when you want to keep an exact image of your drive e.g. normally you have windows installed on hard drive, you would clone that across to a new SSD to avoid reinstalling everything.

Copying large files does not shorten SSD life anymore than cloning... in effect they are both still writing the same amount of data to the SSD.

If the 750Gb is just used for games, then I would just copy the files across. If you have windows installed and need to keep it, then yes cloning would be a better option, in which case something like even the trial version of acronis trueimage would do this (and will move larger drive to a smaller drive, providing the used space is less than the new drive capacity)

Marshstyles · 14 Feb 2013 at 15:57

Thanks for the quick reply Armageus.

I kinda thought it was basically the same thing.

It is just for games. I've got a m4 128gb SSD as my windows/program file drive.