New to SSD's, Need some help.

[SwollPatroll]

So I just bought a new Crucial M4 128gig SSD, knowing that it came with cloning software that would clone my current windows I have on my HD. Problem is, I thought it would only copy my windows 7, not everything on the hard drive. I have about 250 gigs used on this hard drive so I'm getting an error, obviously, that the clone is too big and will not copy over. Is there any way to just copy over nothing but windows itself? I've never had more that 1 HD so I'm kinda newb on cloning stuff over and making new partitions. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[D_K_night]

You cannot clone just the Windows folder. What cloning software does (Ghost, Drive Image and many others) is it would often perform a sector-by-sector copy of your data from one drive to the other.

When cloning, the target drive should be equivalent or greater size than the source ideally. You say you used up 250GB on the old drive - there is no way that your 128GB SSD drive would accommodate all that.

Personally I would:

- use the new SSD strictly as your gaming drive OR
- start from scratch but then again, 128GB is tiny to store the OS + games/apps on...

[seersage]

Its not small... you can have windows plus some games on your sdd and move the rest to the hdd.
Unless you play 10212 games at the same time you can keep the ones you play the most on the ssd and move the rest to the hdd.
A fresh install would be better but if you clean your hdd down to 110GB or less, cloning software can probably clone the data then.

[SwollPatroll]

So could I do something like clone my current HD to an external HD, then strip that clone on the external down to the OS plus the few games I want on the SSD then clone that to the SSD?

[c0rnel]

So could I do something like clone my current HD to an external HD, then strip that clone on the external down to the OS plus the few games I want on the SSD then clone that to the SSD?

I would just install a fresh copy of windows and then reinstall your games on the ssd and also copy over only the major stuff u need from the current drive (don't fill the ssd up, leave some free space on there) and keep the current hd with its contents as a backup just in case something happens to your windows or have some other problem with your ssd.


Yes, you could also do that but i don't recommended it because you also copy over all the other crap and malware/viruses you might have had on the current hd.

[SwollPatroll]

I would just install a fresh copy of windows and then reinstall your games on the ssd and also copy over only the major stuff u need from the current drive (don't fill the ssd up, leave some free space on there) and keep the current hd with its contents as a backup just in case something happens to your windows or have some other problem with your ssd.


Yes, you could also do that but i don't recommended it because you also copy over all the other crap and malware/viruses you might have had on the current hd.

Ya that's what I ended up doing was a fresh install of windows. But whenever I select it as my primary hard drive and the first to boot off of, after the BIOS screen goes by I get nothing but a flashing cursor, not even the windows logo. But when I select my normal HD as my primary one and the one to boot off of I get a choice after the BIOS to choose two different window 7's, 1 being the SSD and the other my normal HD. I can go into the SSD one just fine if i select it but it will never boot on it's own when it's the first in the boot order, just a flashing cursor. Does anyone know why my SSD won't boot on it's own? Is it because I have 2 copies of windows and I need to delete the one off my normal HD?

[seersage]

probably the cloning software didn't do its proper job and some files/flags on the sdd are missing. hard to repair if you don't know what your doing.