I just built a PC (frankensteined from of two other PCs and some scraps). I was having an issue with the SSD I was trying to use as my local drive, so I ended up having to us an HDD. It’s not terrible, but definitely noticable. I’ve done a fair bit of setup, and I don’t really want to have to do it all again on a new SSD. Is there a way to sort of just drop Windows as is onto another drive? It’s mostly just programs and settings, but I have a 2nd drive with some Steam games on them, while Steam is installed on the local drive. I don’t mind if I have to redownload games, but I really don’t want to have to do it all over again if I can avoid it. Thanks.
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If you’re moving from HD to SSD, I’m not sure if a cloning program would work all that well. I’d need to hear from people who have more experience with them. Even then, I’m pretty sure Windows recognizes SSDs and treats them differently. I’d perform a fresh install just so that I knew Windows was property configured to use the hardware (the SSD) to its best capabilities.
If you have any games on your boot drive in Steam, just go into their Properties, into the Installation Files section, and move them to the Steam library on your other drive. When you reload Steam, you can just point to that library on the other drive and your games will be loaded.
don’t forget to not plug in the old hd. at least not untill after you have it booting up on the new drive since it can screw up a fresh install by changing drive letters around.
There are paid softwares that will allow you to do it- I know that EaseUs has a pretty decent tool called Partition Manager (or now apparently called Partition Master) that will be able to copy your boot disk over to a new drive and make it bootable. I am sure that others exist as well- I just haven’t used them personally.
As far as Steam goes you can just tell it where you’re games folder is, after you reinstall it, and it’ll just find all the files (no re-downloading needed).
You can attempt to clone the drive to the other drive using macrium reflect or a similar program. Theoretically it works perfectly fine, just creates a direct copy, but I’ve never had the most success with it.
Also, as far as getting new installations setup quickly, take a look at a package manager like Ninite as it makes getting all of your basic stuff installed 10x easier and less annoying.