You don’t have to have everything on your new SSD, after all. You can also install a fresh version of Windows on the new SSD, make that the primary boot drive (via your motherboard’s BIOS), and use your older hard drive as secondary storage for your less-critical files, games, movies, or whatever. To free up space, you can delete files you no longer need or can re-download again. If that’s not the case, cloning won’t work. Your new SSD has to be big enough to hold everything from your older, primary hard drive. There’s one important fact you’ll need to keep in mind when cloning drives like this.

Step one: Grab Macrium Reflect (free edition).

Laptop owners will need a little extra help.

Make sure your SSD is big enough to hold your stuff.

When you wake up and switch your system over to your new SSD, everything will be exactly as you left it. It’s (reasonably) fast and easy to do, and something you can set to run overnight if you don’t want to wait and watch.

There’s another option you can try when you’re migrating to a new SSD: cloning your old hard drive onto the new one. And it’s not very hard to set up: Physically install it, connect the right cables, and reinstall Windows from scratch.īut maybe you don’t want to deal with setting up Windows (again), copying all of your critical files and folders from your favourite backup location, and reinstalling all your apps.

A solid-state drive is one of the best upgrades you can make for your desktop computer.

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