How To Transfer Windows 7 To Ssd

Many older (or cheaper) Windows laptops come with traditional mechanical hard drives—which these days, are pretty outdated and slow. Upgrading to a new, super fast solid state bulldoze (or SSD) is the surest way to speed up an sometime computer. There's one trouble: moving your Windows installation can be catchy, peculiarly since SSDs are ofttimes smaller than their traditional hard drive counterparts.

However, there is a style to migrate your Windows 7, viii, or 10 installation to an SSD without reinstalling Windows. It takes a few extra steps, but a lot less time.

What You lot Demand

Apart from your SSD, you'll need a few other things for this process to work. Here's what we recommend:

A manner to connect your SSD to your computer. If you accept a desktop computer, then you can usually merely install your new SSD alongside your old difficult drive in the same machine to clone it. If you're using a laptop, still, this unremarkably isn't possible, and then you'll need to buy something like a SATA-to-USB cablevision (shown right), which volition permit you connect a 2.5″ hard drive or SDD to your laptop via USB. You can also install your SSD in an external hard drive enclosure before you kickoff the migration process, though that'due south a chip more fourth dimension consuming.
A re-create of EaseUS Todo Fill-in. (UPDATE: Every bit of 2020, the free version of EaseUS Todo Backup no longer offers this feature.) Its gratuitous version has all the features we need to accomplish the chore in front end of usa, so download the free version and install information technology similar you would whatsoever other Windows program. WARNING: Brand sure you click the "Customize" links on the "Install Additional Software" page and uncheck all the boxes—otherwise EaseUS will try to install some arranged crapware forth with its disk cloning tool.
A fill-in of your data. We can't stress this enough. It's completely foolish to outset messing around with your hard drive without a fill-in. Check out our guide to backing up your computer, and make sure you lot take a total fill-in of your important information before continuing.
A Windows system repair disc. This is a just-in-case tool. On the off chance that your Primary Boot Record gets corrupted, y'all'll exist able to pop in the Windows repair disc and set up information technology in a affair of minutes. Follow these instructions for Windows 7, and these instructions for Windows eight or x. Don't forget to print off a copy of our guide to repairing the bootloader then you lot're ready to fix it if you need to. No really. Exercise it. Burn that CD and print that article—having it on hand will save you the hassle of finding another computer to create the kicking CD on if you need it.

Step I: Tidy Upwardly Your Current Hard Bulldoze

If you're migrating to a drive that's smaller than y'all're electric current ane—which is often the example if you lot're moving to an SSD—you'll meet a trouble right off the bat. There isn't enough room on your destination bulldoze for all your files!

To cheque the capacity of each drive, plug your SSD into your figurer and look for it to testify up in Windows Explorer. right-click on each bulldoze and select "Properties". In the 2 screenshots beneath, yous see our old drive'due south (left) used space (141 GB) is larger than what our new drive (right) tin can hold (118 GB).

You lot'll probably encounter something similar. Then, earlier you drift your data, you'll need to clean up your current hard drive.

RELATED: 7 Means To Free Up Hard Disk Infinite On Windows

Beginning by deleting any files you don't need. That ways sometime movies, TV shows, music,old backups, and anything else that takes upward a lot of infinite. Uninstall any programs you don't use anymore, and so run Disk Cleanup to go rid of any other junk on your system. Yous may even want to run a program like CCleaner to make sure everything is squeaky clean.

That'll aid a little, only in some cases, it may non exist enough. If you lot run out of things to delete, it means you'll have to find a new place to store personal files such as your pictures, documents, movies, music, and more, considering they won't fit on your new drive.

Y'all have a couple of options:

An external hard drive: If you have an external hard drive lying around (that yous aren't using for of import backups!), now's the fourth dimension to use information technology. You will need to movement all your precious files over to it in club to slim down your Windows sectionalisation.
A second internal bulldoze: This usually isn't an option bachelor to a lot of laptop users, simply if you're a desktop user, you could buy a large, cheap extra hard bulldoze and move your files to that. You tin can fifty-fifty move the location of your Documents, Music, and other folders later on y'all migrate, and so Windows never skips a vanquish.
RELATED: How to Save Drive Infinite by Offloading Local Files to the Deject
Cloud storage: If you lot don't accept any actress difficult drives, you could move those extra files to a deject-based solution like Dropbox or OneDrive. Just keep in heed that if you don't have your personal files stored to the cloud yet, it might take a while (similar days or fifty-fifty weeks) to upload them, so but exist prepared. One time you've moved all your stuff over to your deject folders, you tin can unsync them to gratis up that drive infinite.

Remember, since your new hard drive is smaller than your former ane, yous'll need to detect a new permanent place to store them, so pick the solution that works all-time for you long-term.

Step Two: Update Your SSD'due south Firmware

SSDs are, technologically, the new kid on the block. Several of the earliest generation SSDs had diverse bugs and problems which were only banished with pregnant firmware updates. Each drive company has their own technique for updating firmware—some require yous to reboot with a special CD to wink the firmware and some allow you lot to flash the firmware from inside Windows if the drive is not the primary Bone drive. OCZ, for example, has one of the same in-Windows tools (seen in the screenshot above). Visit the the website of your drive manufacturer to read more almost your drive and how to update the firmware. Now is the accented best time to update the firmware as there is aught adventure of data loss, since you oasis't copied anything to it notwithstanding.

Step Three: Clone Your Drive With EaseUS Todo Backup

Now information technology's finally time for the main upshot. Burn up the EaseUS awarding and click "Clone" on the principal screen.

Kickoff, select your source disk. This volition be your electric current Windows organization bulldoze. Our system drive consists of three partitions: an active kick sectionalization, the actual Windows partition, and a recovery partition. We want to clone all three, so we're just going to identify a bank check next to the hard disk drive to make sure they're all selected. Click "Side by side" to proceed.

Now y'all need to select your SSD every bit the destination. In our case, that's "Hard Disk iv", containing 119 GB of unallocated infinite. Brand absolutely sure you choose the right drive, or you could lose data!

Place a check by it, and then check the "Optimize for SSD" box, which volition ensure y'all get the best performance possible out of your resulting Windows installation.

At present, earlier yous click "Adjacent", take a minute to click the "Edit" push button next to your SSD.

EaseUS will show you what your resulting drive will wait like. In some cases, you lot may need to do some tweaking here. For example, on my SSD, EaseUS wanted to make the boot and recovery partitions much larger, even though they incorporate less than a gigabyte of information. I'd rather take that space on my main Windows sectionalisation, so I needed to resize these earlier continuing.

To resize these partitions, first select ane, so drag the handles that appear between the partitions, much as if you were resizing a File Explorer window.

I then resized my master Windows sectionalization to fill the balance of the empty space.

Depending on your bulldoze's layout, you lot may take to modify things in a different mode. When y'all're done, click "OK" to continue. Double-check that everything looks correct, and click "Proceed" to start the clone operation.

If you go the following warning, click "OK" to keep.

The bodily length of the operation will depend on how big your source drive is, as well every bit the speed of the storage mediums and your computer. For us, it took nigh 10 minutes.

RELATED: How to Get Around Windows' "Compress Volume" Inadequacy Problems

If you run into whatsoever errors during this process, you lot may demand to utilize a third-party defragmenting tool on your current system drive—in some cases, arrangement files sitting on the finish of a drive can go far difficult to resize.

When the functioning is completed, click "Finish".

As you tin can see in the following screenshot, our new organization drive is already showing up in File Explorer. All that's left now is to begin using it.

To do this, the side by side steps are fairly uncomplicated. Shut downwards your calculator, remove the old bulldoze and install the new in the aforementioned place. Restart your computer and information technology should boot from your new bulldoze automatically.

If you're using a desktop computer and want to leave the onetime drive in place—maybe as a backup or storage device—and so you volition need to kick into your system BIOS (commonly by holding the Delete button before the Windows kick logo appears). From in that location you will need to betoken your BIOS at the new bulldoze as the first one to boot. Yous can follow our instructions on booting from USB to practise this—only select your new hard drive instead of a disc or USB drive in the instructions.

In either case, when you reboot, yous should find that your SSD is now listed equally the C: drive. (If information technology isn't, double-check you lot performed the in a higher place steps correctly.)

Pace 4: Put the Finishing Touches On Your SSD

One time your new system drive is up and running, yous'll need to do a few terminal things to make sure everything is running in tip-top shape. Here'southward what we recommend.

Make sure TRIM is turned on. TRIM is a special ready of commands that aid SSDs finer manage empty infinite on the disk (if y'all're curious you can read more than here). Open the command prompt and blazon in the following command:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

This lengthy control has a very simple output, either a 0 or a 1. If you get a 1, TRIM is not enabled. If you get a 0, TRIM is enabled. If you need to enable it type the following command:

fsutil behavior set DisableNotify 0

Brand sure defragmentation is turned off. There is no need to defragment an SSD, and in fact, it'south advisable non to. Windows should handle this automatically, but information technology doesn't injure to cheque. Open the Start menu and, in the run box, type dfrgui to open the Disk Defragmenter. Click on the Schedule push button, so click "Select Disks" Uncheck your SSD (which should be your C: drive) and Click OK.

Restore your personal files. Here you lot have some decisions to make. While it's possible that your documents and perhaps even your pictures volition fit onto your new SSD, it'due south unlikely your video and music files will, which means you're going to need to go on them located elsewhere, such as on a 2nd internal drive (you tin can utilize your old drive for this by the way) or an external hard drive.

If you want, you lot can even indicate your special user folders to that new location, so Windows will always look in that location first for the files in question. Just correct-click on your Documents, Music, or other user folders and head to Properties > Location > Move… to move them.

A word on other SSD tweaks and tricks. Be cautious about tweaking beyond these simple fixes. Many SSD guides propose increasing performance by turning off the Superfetch (there is dubious bear witness that this tweak improves performance at all) or disabling the folio file (which decreases writes to the SSD but can cause programs to crash if they run out of RAM). These days, you shouldn't accept to do much to go on your SSD running optimally.

The tweaks we've suggested here will definitely increment operation and with no negative side effects. Continue with caution deploying tweaks you find in other guides and in give-and-take forum posts. And remember: Modernistic SSDs may have limited writes, only they're far less limited than the SSDs of old—then old advice near fugitive things that write to your bulldoze are pretty outdated. You'll probably supervene upon your figurer before y'all come fifty-fifty close to wearing out your SSD!

Congratulations! You've cloned your disk, saved yourself hours of reinstalling Windows and customizing your apps, and you're ready to savor a faster and quieter arrangement disk.