What is the SSD?
SSD, short for solid-state drive, is also known as solid-state disk or electronic disk. It is a data storage device using integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. Solid-state drive has several strengths over the traditional hard disk drive. The majority of the advantage comes from the fact that the drive does not have any moving parts. There are three apparent strengths in comparison with traditional drive, including less power usage, faster data access and higher reliability.
Move Operating System to a New SSD with disk management
Sometimes, we need to move operating system from HDD to SSD for making system performance better, or replacing the smaller system drive from a larger one to extend system partition. To make that simple, we need to move operating system to a new SSD without doing a fresh installation.
There are general three or more steps to move your operating system to a new SSD without dependence on third party software, including shrink your original partition to fit on the smaller SSD, create an image of the new shrunken OS drive and install the new SSD and restore from the image, etc.
There are steps below to move operating system to SSD with disk management, we can follow the steps below to operate. but we don’t recommend people who a lack of basic knowledge about computer. It would cause data loss if any way went wrong.
First of all, go to the “start” menu and right-click ‘computer’ before selecting ‘Manage’. Select ‘Disk Management’ on the left, just under the ‘Storage’ header. Right click your Os partition, which is usually labeled as C, and then select ‘Shrink Volume’. Once completed, your new OS partition will be small enough to fit inside your SSD.
Secondly, head to the control panel and double-click the ‘Backup and Restore’ option. On the left-hand side, select ‘Create a system image’. Select your backup drive to store the new image. Once it’s finished, shut down your PC.
Thirdly, the computer should boot from the optical disc and at the first screen select the ‘Repair your computer’ option. Then select the ‘Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier’ option from the next screen before clinking next. On the next screen, select ‘Use the latest available system image’ and then click next. Now you need to double-check you’re not going to wipe any other drives, click ‘Exclude disks’ button. Click ‘Next’
and finally, ‘Finish’. A warning pop up, asking you want to continue – select yes. Once it finished, you’ll be prompted to restart your computer, click ‘Shutdown’. Now, boot the PC up. It’s time to go back into the Disk Management area. Go to the start menu, right click ‘Computer’ and select ‘Manage’. Once again, head into the same ‘Disk Management’ section on the left as you did in the first place. Right click your new OS partition and select “Extend Volume’, then click next. Finally, we need to enter a single command prompt in administrator mode. Go to ‘Start>All programs>Accessories’, then right click ‘Command prompt’ and run it as an administrator. Type this command prompt: winsat disk. By doing that, you’ll succeed in moving your operating system to a new solid-state disk.
Move OS with Free Partition Manager Software without Reinstalling Windows
Is it a boring and time-consuming process? Indeed. It would be better if we can move the operating system to a new SSD without reinstalling Windows. We have to depend on third party software in doing that. (In internet, there are so many third-party software to declares that it can move OS to SSD OR HHD. But to every users and reader whose reading this article, convenience, safe and money are considered as main factors to evaluate a kind of software. Based on such factors, AOMEI Partition Assistant is a not bad choice for users.)
AOMEI Partition Assistant has five editions: Standard, Lite, Profession, Server, and Unlimited. This partition manager allows you to perform all possible operations on your hard disk drives such as create, delete, move, resize, and copy partitions and so on. In general, there are freeware or paid edition, there are different in function to every edition. Paid edition have more function than freeware. But, you can download edition according to what you need.
In that case, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition (this version is recommended, this edition is a freeware that has many functions. One of that is Migrate OS to SSD or HDD. This function can help to move OS to SSD without reinstalling windows.)
One kind of free partition software that contains “Migrate OS to SSD or HDD” feature would be a great help. It may help us in moving operating system to a new SSD without reinstalling Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP.
You can follow the steps below to migrate OS to SSD or HDD.
- Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. It will display your disk partition information on the main interface. Then, click “Migrate OS to SSD or HDD” on the left side. In the pop-up window, click “Next” to continue.
- In the next window, select the destination disk (SSD or HDD), and then click “Next”.
- In this window, you could modify the information (including size, location, and drive letter) of the partition on new disk, of course, you can keep default settings.
- After setting up all the information, click “Next” to read the note about “Boot Operating System”.
- Click “Finish” back to the main interface where you can preview changes. To save the changes, click “Apply” button to commit the “Pending Operations”.
Comparing two ways mentioned above, it is obvious that AOMEI Partition Assistant is easier. If you want to migrate OS to SSD or HDD, it is a good choice to use migrate OS to SSD or HDD.