[Tilth]

Was wondering if someone could lend me a hand.

I just got a 60gb SSD for xmas and decided to throw it in the machine in hopes to take my OS from my Raid HDD setup and put it on the SSD. After MANY failed attempts to migrate the OS from the HDD to the SSD I decided just to to a fresh install on the SSD. All seems to be working fine with the OS on the SSD (even went into BIOS to tell it to boot the SSD first) but the old OS is still on my Raid HDD.

Two Questions:

1.) Are there files from my OLD OS that i should somehow transfer to the NEW OS on my SSD, if so, how?

2.) How do i go about removing the OLD OS from my OLD HDD?

Thanks for the help all.

Tilth

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Hello Tilth and welcome to G2G.

The old RAID drive should now not be considered as a primary boot drive as listed in Disk Management so simply cut and paste all your personal stuff, such as things in My Documents etc, to My Docs on the SSD.

Once done simply format and reallocate the RAID drive.

[Wolfeymole]

Hello Tilth and welcome to G2G.

The old RAID drive should now not be considered as a primary boot drive as listed in Disk Management so simply cut and paste all your personal stuff, such as things in My Documents etc, to My Docs on the SSD.

Once done simply format and reallocate the RAID drive.

[Tilth]

Hello Tilth and welcome to G2G.

The old RAID drive should now not be considered as a primary boot drive as listed in Disk Management so simply cut and paste all your personal stuff, such as things in My Documents etc, to My Docs on the SSD.

Once done simply format and reallocate the RAID drive.

Thanks Wolfeymole for responding so quickly.

Just a couple clarifications and concerns.

1.) You are correct, the OLD HDD (Drive D:) is not a primary boot drive as listed in the Disk Management but the 100 mb "Recovery" Partition is still located there, instead of the NEW SSD (Drive C:) Is this a problem?

2.) I am glad that transferring my files between drives is an easy cut/paste. My question to that is are there specific folders I should send to the SSD or is it moot? Is it worth transferring the main folders that get set up with windows (Users, My Docs. Etc.) Or does it make no difference which drive they are on? If I transfer the Users folder to the NEW SSD will the items in those folders then pertain to and effect the NEW OS on the SSD?

3.) Formatting and reallocating the old HDD will completely wipe it clean right? Is there a way to remove only Windows from that HDD? I was wanting to keep the other files that are located on that HDD, and that is where i will store my files, as to keep the SSD clean.

Thanks for all your help, this is my first time and i want to make sure i have the NEW OS setup and correct before I go about removing the old OS from my old HDD.

Tilth

[Wolfeymole]

I think the drive structure looks the way it does now because you did not temporarily remove the old drive whilst installing the new SSD but, rather, simply changed the boot order to SATA 2 (SSD) as the main boot drive in the bios.

Let's have a look at a screenshot of what it says in Disk Management anyway please Tilth.

[rshaffer61]

Let's have a look at a screenshot of what it says in Disk Management anyway please Tilth.

Just a little help with this




Go to Start then to Run
Type in compmgmt.msc and click Enter
On left side click on Disk Management
On right side you will see you hard drive.
Male sure the window is open all the way on the top right so I can see all the info it has.
Now I need you to take a screenshot and attach it to your next reply. Do the following to take a screenshot while the above is open and showing on your desktop.

To do a screenshot please have click on your Print Screen on your keyboard. It is normally the key above your number pad between the F12 key and the Scroll Lock key
Now go to Start and then to All Programs
Scroll to Accessories and then click on Paint
In the Empty White Area click and hold the CTRL key and then click the V
Go to the File option at the top and click on Save as
Save as file type JPEG and save it to your Desktop
Make sure the window is open all the way so I can see everything on the top right window.


Attach it to your next reply

[Wolfeymole]

It's all grist to the mill Rshaffer.

[rshaffer61]

You are welcome to use any of the instructions in the future Wolfeymole.
It helps a lot instead of having to type them out all the time.

[Tilth]

Thanks guys, sorry for the delay. I am at work now and will send that screen shot tomorrow. Wolf, you are right about changing the boot order. I tried soooooooo many times to simply migrate the OS to the new SSD and kept failing, so i decided to simply fresh install it onto the SSD. I havent done TOO much with the new SSD, so if when i get you the Screen shot it makes more sense to try the migration again with your guy's expertise im down.

Thanks Again, will post SS tomorrow.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[Tilth]

Here is the screen shot guys!

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by Tilth, 01 January 2013 - 05:53 PM.

[Wolfeymole]

Ok where to begin.

Ok for a start the 100mb System Reserved partition on drive 0 (D:) is NOT a Recovery partition of any description Tilth but was made when you installed Win 7 on it at some point.

When drives are installed on a PC whether they be HDD's or optical drives they will be allocated a drive letter that is immediately after any that are already in place, here is a scenario as an example...

If you shut down and temporarily removed the old HDD, the Passport drive and disconnected the optical drive and rebooted after putting the SSD on SATA 1 and setting the SATA 1 as Primary boot you should find it as C:

If you then add the optical drive on SATA 2 it will be D:

The old HDD on SATA 3 will be E: and the Passport will be F:

It's up to you how you want to do things now but I'd be quite happy to let things stay as they are when looking at that drive structure.

Simply go into the D: drive and pick and choose what you want to transfer to the SSD.

The only concern I do have is seeing the Passport using FAT32 which is ok but I prefer NTFS.

Hope this helps.

[Tilth]

Thanks Wolf,

I guess one of the last questions i have is why some of my games wont work. Here is one example. I have steam and bought a copy of Skyrim, installed it and played it for FAR to many hours just fine. Then I put in the SSD, put windows on it, and set it as primary boot. I can run steam just fine but Skyrim crashes a few moments in. I thought that maybe this could be because of everything but my OS being on the old HDD. after thinking about this some more i realized that it shouldnt be a problem to run ANYTHING that is on my HDD even though i am on the OS located on the SSD. Any insight on why this could be happening? and do you have any suggestions of files/programs i should consider sending to the SSD as well?

Thanks again for all the help!

Tilth

[Wolfeymole]

Ok this sounds like a broken file path issue where the Skyrim executable lies on D: and worked perfectly well when D: was the primary drive.

However this is no longer the case as the SSD is now the primary drive so if you reinstall the Skyrim executable on D: you should find it installing to C:/Program Files etc etc.and then it should work correctly.

In my opinion solid state drives are perfectly ok but are hampered by their size when it comes to someone that has a shed load of executables that need reallocating as it were.

You could of course overcome all this by altering the primary boot option on every reboot but this would be rather tiresome don't you feel?

[Tilth]

I agree it would be tiresome. So, basically, any executable that i find that doesn't work when the SSD is the primary drive needs to be re installed? Can i re install it onto the HDD (the NOT primary drive) and will that work? or do i have to re install it onto the primary SSD? That would present a problem as you said, because i really only want my OS there as to increase the speed and space of my system. Wouldn't make much sense putting the OS on the SSD if I have to put everything else there in order for them to work.

As always thank you for your help

Tilth

[rshaffer61]

In essence what is being said is that since you installed the OS fresh on the SSD the registry does not have the entries for the exe's you are referring to. Reinstalling even to the old hd and location would reinstall those registry entries so it should work.

[Tilth]

Thank you that is very helpful. Does that mean i will lose saved games? Or by re installing am i just re installing the Exe?