Transferring Operating system to SSD

I have just purchased a new computer. I7 processor, Win10 Pro... 1TB HD. I have an 250GB SSD coming and want to put it in the new computer and put the OS on it. What is the best way to move the OS from the 1TB drive to the 250GB SSD? Thanks for all suggestions.

cwgrizz said:

I have just purchased a new computer. I7 processor, Win10 Pro... 1TB HD. I have an 250GB SSD coming and want to put it in the new computer and put the OS on it. What is the best way to move the OS from the 1TB drive to the 250GB SSD? Thanks for all suggestions.

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Your new SSD should come with software that will copy over not only the OS installed on the HDD but the entire drive. The process, called cloning, will probably be something along the lines of installing and running the included software on your current hard drive. You'll then connect the SSD to your computer using a USB cable. Upon rebooting the software will clone your old hard drive onto the new SSD. Once the cloning operation is complete you replace the HDD with your new SSD and boot-up again, this time from the newly installed SSD.

You should also know the cloning operation overwrites the boot-sector on the HDD rendering that drive unusable until it's reformatted. Otherwise you'd be in possession of two drives with a working install of the same operating system but only one license, and that's a no-no. You can of course reformat and repartition the HDD for use as a slave-drive for data or what have you.

Thanks Paul for you explanation. I knew about cloning, but did not realize that the SSD drive came with cloning software. I had been looking a Acronis software for the job, but I guess I don't need it now. Ha! The SSD is an M.2 2280 form which plugs directly into the computer with out the requirement of USB cables, but the process should be the same.
Thanks again, [MENTION=13090]Horoscope Fish[/MENTION]

cwgrizz said:

Thanks Paul for you explanation. I knew about cloning, but did not realize that the SSD drive came with cloning software.

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Well every SSD I've bought has come with it. If you bought your drive "white box", vs retail, you may need to buy the software separately.

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cwgrizz said:

The SSD is an M.2 2280 form...

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2280 form factor... Niiiiice!

Horoscope Fish said:

You should also know the cloning operation overwrites the boot-sector on the HDD rendering that drive unusable until it's reformatted. Otherwise you'd be in possession of two drives with a working install of the same operating system but only one license, and that's a no-no. You can of course reformat and repartition the HDD for use as a slave-drive for data or what have you.

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Does the cloning operation really wipe out all the data on the HDD? Or does it just wipe out the boot sector and leave the data intact? For instance, if you have a 2 Gig HDD with 1 Gig of data (In our case photos ) and want to install a 500 MB SSD, can this be done? Would, of course use the 2 GB HDD for data (photo) storage.

SSD's do not generally come with a usb connection.


There's a few fine points to putting the ssd in the computer, cloning the boot drive, and pointing things to the ssd for boot up.

A short how-to on a photography forum won't help you much.

Texas said:

SSD's do not generally come with a usb connection.

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I should have said SATA...

My overarching point was not the type of connection, but rather that both drives need to be connected simultaneously in order to complete the cloning operation.

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Bikerbrent said:

Does the cloning operation really wipe out all the data on the HDD? Or does it just wipe out the boot sector and leave the data intact? For instance, if you have a 2 Gig HDD with 1 Gig of data (In out case photos ) and want to install a 500 MB SSD, can this be done?

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I've only used a couple different applications to clone hard drives and I don't believe either reformatted the the drive; I believe it simply wipes the boot sector to prevent you from copying a fully functional version of Windows (or another licensed OS) from one drive to another because of licensing issues. Every time I've cloned a drive I've gotten a warning letting me know the source drive, once cloned, will no longer be bootable. If installed as "slave" I would think the data would be intact. Emphasis on "think". It's not something I would depend on, personally, until I knew for sure.

That being said, I've never tried to clone a larger drive to a smaller one so in all honesty I'm not sure what would happen if you did. I suspect the cloning software would not allow it but I could be wrong about that. I think a lot would depend on the software you were using.

In my case, I don't think it will be too complicated. It is a new machine without much added in the way of personnel files or additional programs. It has about 50GB of disc space used and the SSD is 250GB, so this should not an issue here for cloning. It won't need cleaning, etc.

cwgrizz said:

In my case, I don't think it will be too complicated. It is a new machine without much added in the way of personnel files or additional programs. It has about 50GB of disc space used and the SSD is 250GB, so this should not an issue here for cloning. It won't need cleaning, etc.

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what do you plan on doing with the 1TB that came with the machine (once the cloning is done)? that's a nice chunk of space. you may have to partition that into a D drive or something..

Well, I think I spent money unnecessarily. The SSD 250GB is not needed. I received it today and started to install it. What I failed to realize when I purchased the computer is that it has a 16GB Intel Optane memory accelerated 1TB HDD. IOW the M.2 form slot is taken up by the Intel Optane Memory... It is supposed to be faster that an added SSD for accessing the HDD etc.

At least that is the way I understand it. It only runs on newer machines with WIN10 64bit and newer chipsets.

Therefore I think I am going to leave well enough alone. Ha! And try to find a home for the 250GB SDD M.2 2280 Form.