Feature Articles

How to Migrate your System to an SSD

By Kenny Yeo - 14 Feb 2013

Windows Setup (condt...)

Windows Setup (condt...)


 

Cloning Your Hard Disk (if your SSD is larger or the same capacity as your existing HDD)

Once your SSD is aligned, launch EaseUS Partition Master and select your existing hard disk. If you have more than one partition on your existing hard drive, select the partition that contains your Windows installation.

When selecting the drive to clone, be sure to click on the line that begins with "Disk" and not the letter of the drive itself unless you wish to clone only that particular partition.

Next, on left sidebar, select "Copy Disk" and EaseUS Partition Master will begin check the drive for errors. After which it will prompt you for your destination drive. Choose your SSD as the destination and begin the cloning process.

After selecting "Copy Disk", the software will check your drive for errors.

When prompted for your destination disk, select your SSD.

Depending on your system and the number of files you have, the cloning process can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to hours. When the cloning process is complete, reboot your system, enter BIOS and set your SSD as the first boot device

 

Cloning Your Hard Disk (if your SSD has a smaller capacity than your existing HDD)

If your new SSD has less storage space than your existing HDD, you will need to do some house-cleaning first. We recommend copying your personal files from your User directory (My Documents, My Music, My Pictures etc.) to another hard disk or a portable hard disk first. Then, delete only the contents from the original folder but leave the original folders as it is for restoration later. This is of course assuming if you have adhered to the standard saving location for user-created files.

If you still find yourself lacking enough storage space on your SSD, what we recommend doing is uninstalling applications that you hardly use and reinstalling them on your old hard drive later after the cloning process. Obviously, this is not the most ideal solution, hence we strongly advise you to carefully consider the capacity of the SSD you are buying.

You can trim your hard drive down by going to your User directory and copying contents of the folders to another hard disk or a portable hard disk.

Once you have done so, follow the steps described in the first part above to clone your hard drive. After the cloning process is done, you will need to restore your user files. To restore your user files, simply go to your old hard drive and copy the files from your old User folders to the new one. Alternatively, you can also remap them to your old hard drive.

Right-click on the folders in your new User directory that you want to remap, click on Properties and then the location tab. You will be greeted with this screen where you can remap the folder to the one in your old hard drive.

To do this, right-click on each of them and click on "Properties" and then the "Location" tab. Then click on "Find Target..." at the bottom right and find the corresponding folder in your old hard drive. Remap of them and you’re done.

Take note that the remapping process is only applicable if you intend to keep your old drive along with your newly installed SSD. One downside is that if the old drive decides to 'retire', your precious data created will be at risk - unless of course you've an external back drive which is set to archive your files periodically.

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