Transfering stuff from one HDD to another

Matticus88 · 8 Jul 2015 at 14:02

Hi, I have installed a New Harddrive, a 1TB drive as my current 500gb drive is literally full to bursting.

I want to move literally everything from my old drive to the new one, including my OS (win7) so that i can reformat my old 500GB drive and use that as a backup storage drive.

Is it a simple case of installing windows on the new drive and then copy/paste the files i want over on the 1TB Drive then reformatting the 500GB drive?

Spuddy · 8 Jul 2015 at 14:19

You can "clone" a drive to a new drive. Not sure which program you use on Windows however as I've only ever done it on Mac.

Would be interested to know however as I want to upgrade the SSD in my gaming PC in the very near future.

Whoop · 8 Jul 2015 at 14:21

Spuddy said:
You can "clone" a drive to a new drive. Not sure which program you use on Windows however as I've only ever done it on Mac.

Would be interested to know however as I want to upgrade the SSD in my gaming PC in the very near future.

Macrium Reflect Free is the generally used one, pick the drives and let it go.

Matticus88 · 8 Jul 2015 at 15:03

I'm downloading Macrium Reflect Free, So this will transfer my stuff to the new drive no problems? I will be able to remove or reformat my old drive without windows breaking or anything after?

soundesciple · 8 Jul 2015 at 15:27

Macrium reflet free. Clone your c: drive to your new 1TB drive and make a rescue disk as well just in case of problems. Ive been using it for years and works every time. But your always better off doing a fresh install first then installing your programs again. That way you dond copy any faults to your new drive and should be a lot quicker booting without all the junk accumulated from old unistalled programs.

pepp77 · 8 Jul 2015 at 15:37

If you do use Macrium make sure you increase the partition size after choosing what to clone, otherwise the new drive will only have a partition the same size as the old drive and the rest of the space will be a separate partition.

coupe69 · 8 Jul 2015 at 16:19

pepp77 said:
If you do use Macrium make sure you increase the partition size after choosing what to clone, otherwise the new drive will only have a partition the same size as the old drive and the rest of the space will be a separate partition.

You can just extend the partition in disk management.

Spuddy · 8 Jul 2015 at 16:33

Thanks guys, I've made a note of the software.

Now just waiting for those 1TB SSD's to plummet

topgun06 · 8 Jul 2015 at 16:36

Done something similar recently when increasing the size of my users and programs drive. There were on the same drive in different partitions, I've now separated them onto their old disks.

I don't know if I could have used Macrum to help me, I sort of did it all manually, uninstalling on one drive and reinstalling on the new one. But I'm now thinking that W7 could do with a fresh install along with a clean install of all the programs. There is so much junk left behind after doing the transfer.

I may wait until W10 and do a fresh install along with that.