Changing hard drive

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I wish to put a ssd hard drive into my desktop. Is there a way to transfer my operating system between the two drives. Or will I need to purchase new OS software. I want to stay with windows 7. I only use my desktop for pp and never on the net.
 
charlychuckchuck said:
I wish to put a ssd hard drive into my desktop. Is there a way to transfer my operating system between the two drives. Or will I need to purchase new OS software. I want to stay with windows 7. I only use my desktop for pp and never on the net.
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You will be able to use cloning software such as Macrium reflect (other free alternatives are also available) and a USB to sata cable (few quid off ebay) to clone the drive to the SSD.

When buying an SSD make sure it is the same size or larger than your current hard drive if you want to do a straight clone.
If you wish to buy an SSD that is smaller then your current hard drive you will need to partition your existing hard drive to make it fit the SSD.
 
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Thanks for quick reply Stuart I will do a search on this info. (y)
 
The last Samsung ssd I bought for my brothers PC it came with an application to complete the cloning. I have a usb caddy to which I connected the ssd so it could be cloned to.
 
I cannot do any research until this evening, but when the os has been cloned onto the new ssd drive, can the old hard drive be formatted and used for storage and the ssd become the drive c.:thinking:
 
All the above would work, but for me, I'd take the opportunity of a clean build, buy an external drive case for your current hdd

First ensure you've got all the serial nos etc for Windows and all your other programs.

Then swap the drive and do a clean install onto the SSD.

Then install all your other software on the SSD.

At that point install your old HDD into the external case, connect it up and copy over all the data you want to keep (havea spring clean), as a safety measure you might want to wait a while before the next step, just in case you've missed something you might want.

Now you can format the old drive, set it up for backups, and if you need it you've got a physical backup you can take to a different location.
 
Macrium reflect free.

Worked on every drive swap I've done. Isn't bothered by going from larger to smaller sizes too which some moan about.

Some of the Samsung come with symantec ghost but it was one of those programs that didn't like going from big to small.
 
Check before you start that the new drive will enable AHCI in the bios automatically .
When I did mine I had to enable it manually before installing windows, its a b*****r of a job to change it after you have installed windows, although things have probably moved on since then
 
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