Cloning Drive

[bebbles12]

I just bought a new 240gb SSD from crucial. My daughter's ssd is only 128gb and we've used up all the room and it's running slow. She uses windows 7 now, and I am thinking of putting in windows 8. What is the best way to do this? I was thinking of loading windows 8 to the new SSD then clone the old to the new? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
b

 

[Celery]

I was thinking of loading windows 8 to the new SSD then clone the old to the new? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
b

Sorry but that didn't make sense. Are you saying that you will install win 8 on the new SSD then get a copy of it to the old SSD?

I think you can do that with the retail version of win 8 but it's better that you install on both SSDs separately.

 

[cavemangrinder]

Cloning implies making an exact replica of the disk.So, unless you want Windows 7 on the new drive, I'd say just backup all user data externally from the old ssd and install Windows 8 onto the new drive. Then, just transfer over all the user data.

 

[iPwn]

Cloning implies making an exact replica of the disk.So, unless you want Windows 7 on the new drive, I'd say just backup all user data externally from the old ssd and install Windows 8 onto the new drive. Then, just transfer over all the user data.

Exactly!

You can get a cheap adapter to plug the old drive in later and copy personal data off.

Do a clean install of Windows 8 on the new drive and then plug the old one in later to get your files from:

[X]:\Users\[UserName]\[Folder]

Where

X = Old drive letter
UserName = Her username she logs into now
Folder(s)

• Desktop
• Documents
• Pictures
• Music
• Videos
• Favorites

 

[bebbles12]

Cloning implies making an exact replica of the disk.So, unless you want Windows 7 on the new drive, I'd say just backup all user data externally from the old ssd and install Windows 8 onto the new drive. Then, just transfer over all the user data.

Sorry for the confusion, that is exactly what I want to do. Thanks to everyone and great forum!

 

[setishock]

Assuming it's a desktop you're speaking of then why not get a 1TB drive to use as data storage. I have a monster desktop that only has a 128GB SSD for the C: drive. Only thing on the C: drive is the OS and the M$ office software. Everything else goes to data drives.

 

[cb600fshornet]

I'd combine the multiple suggestions/purchases already made I think...

If I was buying an SSD I'd go for a 240GB (or 256GB) like you've just purchased, as having a decent size main hard drive can be useful, and then I'd get a mechanical drive to store my data on (which doesn't need to be accessed as quickly). An external hard drive would be useful for a laptop, but on a desktop PC I'd do as setishock has suggested and put a mechanical drive in there as well!

 

[Celery]

A spin drive is always good to have especially for data storage.

I have a 32 gig SSD cache in my system and while it's not as fast as a full fledged SSD it sped up my boot/system considerably by caching the most frequent usages.

 

[ianh21]

i recently did this very thing easily with acronis true image, worked a treat.