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swapping hard drives?

narlus

Eastcoast Softcore
Staff member
Nov 7, 2001
24,658
63
behind the viewfinder
my 128 GB SSD seems to always be near capacity, and trying to find what is bloating it is difficult.

so, now that prices have come down so much, what's the easiest way to swap over to a higher capacity one w/o having to re-install all the programs and drivers?
 

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,194
19,158
Canaderp
You can create an image of your current machine and then "restore" it to your new hard drive. Windows has/had/maybe a tool for this. Open the start menu and search for Backup and Restore.

Or you can find a copy of Acronis. You can boot your machine from a dvd/cd and create an image from there, then restore the image to the new drive.

Are you storing everything, including your personal files on the one SSD? If so, I would reconsider the format of your installation. Install Windows and all the programs to one SSD, then immediately create an image backup with Acronis. That way if your system ever bites the dust, you will have an image ready to be restored. Then, keep all of your personal files, documents, media etc on a separate regular hard drive. That way, you can easily backup your personal files without all clutter and mumbo jumbo of the system files.

That's a quick run down. I'm sure Binary Visions can chime in here and toss my theories into the river :D
 

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,194
19,158
Canaderp
I've been using Acronis Disk Director lately for cloning drives or resizing them. Super easy.

Not sure what version of Acronis I was using before, but this is even better.