Upgrading to a new SDD

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sandcracker21

Member
Pardon my ignorance, but I am looking to upgrade to a new SDD. I have Windows 7 on my HDD but do not have the disk.

If I buy the SDD, can Windows just be installed from the MB? How can one do a clean install and then eventually change the HDD over to a backup drive?
 
sandcracker21 said:
Pardon my ignorance, but I am looking to upgrade to a new SDD. I have Windows 7 on my HDD but do not have the disk.

If I buy the SDD, can Windows just be installed from the MB? How can one do a clean install and then eventually change the HDD over to a backup drive?
Click to expand...

You can clone the HDD to the SSD and then swap the drives. I've found Macrium Reflect (free) very good for the job. The SSD must be bigger than all the data/program bytes on the SSD. If you SSD is bigger than the HDD, you can resize the partition on the SSD.

If you have any questions, come back here and I will be more than happy to give you some help. I've done this no less than 10 times so it'd become second nature to me.:P
 
I suppose I will have to do that then.. just thought a clean install would be better (get rid of a lot of junk)

one other question: I have an Alienware Aurora R3 case, can I just use the HDD trays in there or do I have to buy a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter?
 
sandcracker21 said:
I suppose I will have to do that then.. just thought a clean install would be better (get rid of a lot of junk)?
Click to expand...

If you want to do a clean install although you don't have the OS disks, you can cloned the drive first, and make sure it is a good successful clone. Then you can go back to create a set of recovery disks. Then do a reinstall from the discovery disks. If it is successful, you then restore the data from the cloned drive. If it is not successful, swap the drives and put the working version back.
 
sandcracker21 said:
I suppose I will have to do that then.. just thought a clean install would be better (get rid of a lot of junk)

one other question: I have an Alienware Aurora R3 case, can I just use the HDD trays in there or do I have to buy a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter?
Click to expand...

Look at it practically; it's much more easier to simply clone a drive than to go though an entire installation and setup process again, if things are running good then there's no real need for a complete reinstall.
 
9006 said:
Look at it practically; it's much more easier to simply clone a drive than to go though an entire installation and setup process again, if things are running good then there's no real need for a complete reinstall.
Click to expand...

Bah, a reinstall takes about 15-20 minutes if using a fast USB drive and you have a decent Internet connection to pull down the other patches.

You'll generally save more time than waiting on your bloated, existing install all of the time by having a snappier fresh one.
 
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