OV9

I put an ssd in the pc I build recently for my step son, and have seen the light!

However the windows 10 on my pc is a relatively new install with minimal crap, and I really can't be bothered to start again.

If I was to stick an ssd in and clone my current C drive, does the computer still 'see' it as the old drive and will all programs and links still work?

How about windows store purchases stored on there?

The only reason I'm hesitating was that it was such a ball ache to get the 100gb or so of forza downloaded that I don't want to risk breaking it and having to start again. Windows store files don't seem to be saved in a normal file structure in that you could just copy them to another drive, you have to uninstall and download to another location through the store.

I've changed a 256gb SSD for a 1tb SSD before and using Macrium Reflect, you genuinely wouldn't know anything had been changed until you looked at the space available. So it can be done!

In contrast, I swapped an SSD into my Dell XPS and re-installed Win10 from a USB stick. It just worked straight away. Easier than when I last took an image of the working drive.

That would work of course but it can't have been a mirror image of the PC from beforehand?

Tbh I was amazed at how well the SSD swap worked out.

It’s not a mirror of the previous drive, no; but that generally means it’ll be free of the crap you installed and forgot about

True dat

Buy/Steal Active Disk Image

Put new drive in your current PC.

Clone the drive onto the new SSD.

Take the old drive out.

Carry on with life.

Done it loads of times.

In order for cloning to work, I believe target drive has to be of same size or greater. This has caused me issues in past when transferring from a pron ridden 500gb sata drive to 256gb SSD.

If in doubt, fresh install and slave second drive.

Also don't forget that SSDs and HDDs often benefit from different sector sizes.

Plus there's the whole old alignment issue

Just reinstall on the new SSD, load up the old disk as a second one and copy over the data you need.

Which then breaks the windows store game which then involves three weeks of pain trying to download a 90+gb game on the utter heap of crap that it the windows store which can't handle partial downloads or downloads which take more than 24h

Can't you backup the game installation files first? Like in Steam?

Simon wrote: ↑Thu Oct 25, 2018 6:13 pm Can't you backup the game installation files first? Like in Steam?

That will involve an internet transfer? That's the bit Harry is trying to avoid with his slow AF internet connection out in the sticks.

Harry - do what Tim said.

Simon wrote: ↑Thu Oct 25, 2018 6:13 pm Can't you backup the game installation files first? Like in Steam?

Nope, because the windows store is an utter piece of shite. You can't back up games, you can't set download speed limits so it cripples everyone else's useage, it can't handle multi part downloads, it can't handle downloads spanning days, they can't even get the progress bar to work properly. It really is a joke, it doesn't save files in a normal regognisable structure so you can't even 'see' them on the disk, it's just sat there taking up space magically somewhere.

However, I have found that you can move an apps location within windows 10 so will try it on a few demos before I more the game proper, then I can clone the c to an ssd and hopefully it'll still work...

Buy cheap USB HDD

Perform Windows Backup to USB HDD

Install SSD

Restore Windows Backup to SSD.

I've done that a few times and never had any real issues with it, although I've not done it with Windows 10.

Seems the procedure hasn't changed much over the years.

Well that was a ball ache

Bought 500gb ssd, downloaded macrium reflect.

Couldn't clone drive as the ssd wasn't big enough to clone a 1tb hard drive

Tried to shrink the volume, couldn't shrink to less than 550gb due to file structure or unmoveavle sectors or something.

Backed up my windows to my 2tb storage drive, started a reinstall from the backup and it decided to format the 2tb drive instead of install it to the ssd.

Panicked a lot, but managed to save everything with Recuva onto a new 4tb hd, as didn't want to try and recover to the same drive and risk overwriting anything.

Reformatted 2tb drive, used macrium reflect to copy my c drive to it, then shrunk the volume to 450gb, used macrium reflect to copy that drive to the ssd, so now have 'my' windows 10 on a nice new ssd, and a 4tb storage drive.

My old 2tb is showing a weird partition which I can't get rid of for some reason, but when I figure that out I'll keep that one as a backup disk in case I mess anything else up again

Thread resurection, just did an SSD shuffle of a new shiney nvme drive into my gaming PC. Cloned the Win 10 install from the 240GB SATA SSD to the 480GB nvme drive no problem. Then shuffled a laptop intall of win10 from a hideously slow 1TB drive (only 100GB used) onto the old 240GB SATA SSD also no problem with Western Digital's Acronis tool.

So thumbs up for both the WD drives and their software.

Recently did a motherboard swap and although the bios could see the ssd I couldn't select it as a bootable drive. Bit of faffing with settings and flipping a switch, suddenly it appeared and would boot fine.