upgrade from HDD to NVMe drive

[stevejd58]

My pc's HDD (500gb) is getting pretty full (slow) and I'm looking at using a 500 gb NVMe drive for my C drive.
I'm pretty OK with cloning win 10 to the new drive but confused re the programs and games on the existing drive, I don't want to just clone the whole disk, just the OS. I had thought of cloning the non OS programs/games to a bigger 1TB HDD I currently use as a back up but has little on it
Once I move win 10 to the new drive, do I have to reinstall all the games & programs or is there a way around this?

 

[Oussebon]

If you clone / image the drive, you get everything that's on the drive (or partition/s in the case of imaging). Hence clone, or image.

To get you what you want:

1) remove the games from the drive - onto that 1TB HDD you have

2) image/clone the remaining material onto the new drive
OR
Perform a clean install of Windows onto the brand new drive

3) In your game clients, tell it where to find the game files:

How to transfer game files between PCs

It's possible on every major digital storefront... except the Microsoft Store.

www.pcgamer.com

You will probably want your favourite games on the SSD, as it does increase load times.

You can't usually do this (i.e. just copy over to another drive) with installed programs - but you want programs on the SSD anyway.

Just to check, I take it your PC supports NVMe SSDs (at their full speeds)?

 

[LCarlson]

Oussebon, you are a lifesaver. I am in the same boat and you've just solved my problem too!
~LC

 

[Oussebon]

Glad it helped

The PCG guide for moving games is very good. I think the Epic store instructions may need a slight tweak/clarification but it helped me get to the right place with that too.

For cloning and/or imaging drives, I can strongly recommend the free and very powerful tool Macrium Reflect