I recently purchased an SSD, but I've got 400GB of used space on my HDD, being a Samsung 840 EVO and WD Blue respectively.
How can I delete the OS on the HDD, while maintaining the the data. The only files I must save is my entire collection of Steam saves, music, and my emulators, and their saves. I need to either migrate Steam to my SSD or delete everything but Steam from my HDD.
Suggestions?
I see a simple solution to this.
What you do is install Windows on your SSD, when thats done, in your UEFI and select SSD with windows on as primary boot drive.
When your into windows on the SSD, and have the HDD attached in the computer you will see it as a drive and you can pull off and transfer whatever you need to the SSD (might require some digging in the folders).
And when you have off the HDD what you need, you can format it all and get rid of the old windows and never need to worry about it again, and have a drive for whatever.
The best way you can do this:
1. Get a temporary external hard drive that can hold all your precious data. Not the whole OS from the HDD!
2. Copy all your precious data from the HDD to the External HDD.
3. Disconnect the External HDD & the HDD. Then connect the SSD.
4. Reinstall Windows on the SSD & install the drivers + Updates.
5. Connect the HDD and make sure all your data is copied to the external HDD.
6. Format the HDD (NOT THE EXTERNAL HDD!!!!!!!!)
7. Create a partition on the HDD and name it DATA.
8. Change the location of all your profile folders to the new created DATA partition on the HDD.
9. Copy all the data from the external HDD to the appropriate folders on the DATA partition. And also copy your entire steam folder.
10. Disconnect the External HDD.
11. Open your steam.exe on the DATA partion and verify that every game works.
12. If all works, your music is there and other stuff, format the external HDD.
Then you shout have a fresh system with a SSD and Data on a separate drive. If you need help with redirecting your profile or something else. Feel free to message me on the teksynidate site.
If I copy my Steam folder to my SSD/Temp HD, will the save files also be brought over?
How do you copy all your data and not the OS files, is it just a matter literally copy and pasting the likes of your ProgramFiles(x86) to external HDD instead of doing a backup. Can you verify this works as I'm going through the same problem.
And regards to your game saves, i believe they are mostly located in your documents and its a matter of transferring them over to the SSD along with the steam folder