How To Install Ssd On Windows 7

Many older (or cheaper) Windows laptops come with traditional mechanical hard drives—which these days, are pretty outdated and slow. Upgrading to a new, super fast solid country drive (or SSD) is the surest mode to speed upwards an sometime computer. There's one problem: moving your Windows installation can be tricky, especially since SSDs are often smaller than their traditional hard drive counterparts.

However, there is a way to migrate your Windows seven, 8, or x installation to an SSD without reinstalling Windows. Information technology takes a few actress steps, but a lot less fourth dimension.

What You Need

Apart from your SSD, you'll need a few other things for this process to work. Here's what we recommend:

A way to connect your SSD to your reckoner. If you lot take a desktop computer, then you tin normally merely install your new SSD alongside your old hard bulldoze in the same car to clone it. If you're using a laptop, still, this usually isn't possible, and then you lot'll demand to purchase something like a SATA-to-USB cable (shown right), which will let you connect a 2.5″ hard drive or SDD to your laptop via USB. You can likewise install your SSD in an external difficult drive enclosure before you start the migration process, though that'south a bit more fourth dimension consuming.
A copy of EaseUS Todo Backup. (UPDATE: As of 2022, the gratis version of EaseUS Todo Backup no longer offers this feature.) Its complimentary version has all the features we demand to accomplish the job in forepart of us, then download the free version and install it like you would whatsoever other Windows plan. Alarm: Make sure you click the "Customize" links on the "Install Boosted Software" page and uncheck all the boxes—otherwise EaseUS will try to install some bundled crapware forth with its disk cloning tool.
A backup of your data. We can't stress this enough. It'south completely foolish to commencement messing around with your hard drive without a backup. Check out our guide to backing up your figurer, and make certain you have a total backup of your important data before standing.
A Windows system repair disc. This is a just-in-case tool. On the off gamble that your Master Boot Record gets corrupted, you'll exist able to popular in the Windows repair disc and fix information technology in a matter of minutes. Follow these instructions for Windows 7, and these instructions for Windows eight or 10. Don't forget to print off a copy of our guide to repairing the bootloader so yous're prepare to fix it if you need to. No really. Practice it. Burn that CD and print that article—having it on hand will save you lot the hassle of finding another calculator to create the kick CD on if you need it.

Step One: Tidy Up Your Current Difficult Drive

If you lot're migrating to a drive that's smaller than you're current one—which is ofttimes the case if you're moving to an SSD—y'all'll see a problem right off the bat. There isn't enough room on your destination drive for all your files!

To bank check the capacity of each drive, plug your SSD into your computer and expect for it to evidence upwardly in Windows Explorer. right-click on each drive and select "Backdrop". In the ii screenshots below, yous see our old drive's (left) used space (141 GB) is larger than what our new drive (correct) tin can hold (118 GB).

You'll probably come across something like. So, before you drift your information, you'll need to clean up your electric current hard bulldoze.

RELATED: 7 Means To Free Up Hard Disk Space On Windows

Start by deleting any files y'all don't need. That means old movies, Television shows, music,quondam backups, and anything else that takes up a lot of space. Uninstall any programs you don't employ anymore, then run Disk Cleanup to become rid of any other junk on your organization. You may even want to run a programme like CCleaner to brand sure everything is squeaky make clean.

That'll help a little, but in some cases, it may not be enough. If you run out of things to delete, it ways y'all'll have to observe a new place to store personal files such as your pictures, documents, movies, music, and more, because they won't fit on your new drive.

You lot have a couple of options:

An external difficult drive: If you lot have an external hard drive lying around (that you aren't using for important backups!), now's the time to apply it. You volition need to move all your precious files over to it in club to slim down your Windows partition.
A second internal drive: This usually isn't an choice available to a lot of laptop users, simply if you're a desktop user, you could purchase a large, cheap extra hard drive and motion your files to that. You tin even movement the location of your Documents, Music, and other folders afterwards you drift, then Windows never skips a beat.
RELATED: How to Save Drive Space by Offloading Local Files to the Cloud
Cloud storage: If you lot don't have any extra hard drives, you could movement those extra files to a deject-based solution similar Dropbox or OneDrive. Just continue in mind that if you don't have your personal files stored to the deject yet, information technology might take a while (like days or even weeks) to upload them, so only be prepared. Once you've moved all your stuff over to your deject folders, you lot can unsync them to free up that drive space.

Remember, since your new hard drive is smaller than your old 1, you'll demand to notice a new permanent place to store them, then pick the solution that works best for yous long-term.

Step Ii: Update Your SSD's Firmware

SSDs are, technologically, the new kid on the cake. Several of the earliest generation SSDs had diverse bugs and issues which were but banished with significant firmware updates. Each bulldoze company has their own technique for updating firmware—some require you to reboot with a special CD to flash the firmware and some allow you to wink the firmware from inside Windows if the drive is not the principal Bone bulldoze. OCZ, for example, has one of the aforementioned in-Windows tools (seen in the screenshot in a higher place). Visit the the website of your bulldoze manufacturer to read more nearly your drive and how to update the firmware. Now is the absolute best time to update the firmware as there is zero risk of data loss, since you haven't copied anything to it yet.

Step Three: Clone Your Bulldoze With EaseUS Todo Backup

Now it's finally time for the chief effect. Burn down up the EaseUS application and click "Clone" on the master screen.

Starting time, select your source disk. This volition be your current Windows system bulldoze. Our system bulldoze consists of 3 partitions: an active kick partition, the actual Windows partition, and a recovery segmentation. We want to clone all iii, then we're just going to identify a check next to the hd to make sure they're all selected. Click "Next" to proceed.

Now you need to select your SSD as the destination. In our instance, that's "Hard disk four", containing 119 GB of unallocated space. Make absolutely sure y'all choose the correct drive, or you could lose data!

Identify a bank check past it, and and then check the "Optimize for SSD" box, which volition ensure yous get the best performance possible out of your resulting Windows installation.

Now, before you click "Side by side", take a minute to click the "Edit" push adjacent to your SSD.

EaseUS will show yous what your resulting drive will look like. In some cases, you may need to do some tweaking here. For example, on my SSD, EaseUS wanted to make the boot and recovery partitions much larger, even though they contain less than a gigabyte of data. I'd rather take that space on my master Windows sectionalization, then I needed to resize these earlier continuing.

To resize these partitions, starting time select one, and then drag the handles that appear between the partitions, much as if you were resizing a File Explorer window.

I and then resized my master Windows partition to fill the rest of the empty space.

Depending on your drive's layout, you may have to change things in a different mode. When y'all're done, click "OK" to continue. Double-check that everything looks right, and click "Keep" to start the clone operation.

If you get the following alarm, click "OK" to continue.

The actual length of the functioning will depend on how big your source bulldoze is, every bit well every bit the speed of the storage mediums and your estimator. For us, it took about 10 minutes.

RELATED: How to Go Effectually Windows' "Shrink Volume" Inadequacy Bug

If you come across any errors during this procedure, you may need to use a third-political party defragmenting tool on your current system drive—in some cases, organization files sitting on the finish of a drive can arrive hard to resize.

When the performance is completed, click "Finish".

Every bit yous can see in the following screenshot, our new system drive is already showing up in File Explorer. All that's left now is to begin using information technology.

To exercise this, the next steps are adequately simple. Close down your calculator, remove the old bulldoze and install the new in the same place. Restart your computer and it should kicking from your new drive automatically.

If y'all're using a desktop computer and want to leave the old drive in place—perhaps equally a backup or storage device—then you will need to boot into your system BIOS (usually past holding the Delete button earlier the Windows boot logo appears). From at that place you will need to bespeak your BIOS at the new drive equally the first one to kick. Y'all can follow our instructions on booting from USB to do this—merely select your new hard drive instead of a disc or USB bulldoze in the instructions.

In either example, when you reboot, you should find that your SSD is at present listed equally the C: drive. (If information technology isn't, double-check you performed the higher up steps correctly.)

Step Four: Put the Finishing Touches On Your SSD

Once your new system drive is up and running, you'll demand to practise a few last things to make sure everything is running in tip-top shape. Here's what we recommend.

Make sure TRIM is turned on. TRIM is a special set of commands that assistance SSDs effectively manage empty space on the deejay (if you're curious you lot tin can read more than hither). Open up up the control prompt and type in the following control:

fsutil beliefs query DisableDeleteNotify

This lengthy command has a very simple output, either a 0 or a i. If y'all become a i, TRIM is not enabled. If you go a 0, TRIM is enabled. If y'all need to enable it type the following control:

fsutil behavior fix DisableNotify 0

Make sure defragmentation is turned off. There is no need to defragment an SSD, and in fact, information technology'south advisable not to. Windows should handle this automatically, simply information technology doesn't hurt to cheque. Open the Showtime menu and, in the run box, type dfrgui to open up the Disk Defragmenter. Click on the Schedule push button, then click "Select Disks" Uncheck your SSD (which should be your C: bulldoze) and Click OK.

Restore your personal files. Here you have some decisions to make. While it's possible that your documents and perchance even your pictures will fit onto your new SSD, it's unlikely your video and music files will, which ways you're going to need to keep them located elsewhere, such as on a second internal bulldoze (you tin can use your one-time drive for this past the way) or an external difficult bulldoze.

If you want, you tin can even point your special user folders to that new location, so Windows volition always wait there commencement for the files in question. Just right-click on your Documents, Music, or other user folders and head to Backdrop > Location > Move… to movement them.

A word on other SSD tweaks and tricks. Be cautious nearly tweaking beyond these simple fixes. Many SSD guides propose increasing functioning past turning off the Superfetch (there is dubious evidence that this tweak improves functioning at all) or disabling the page file (which decreases writes to the SSD but can cause programs to crash if they run out of RAM). These days, you shouldn't take to practice much to go along your SSD running optimally.

The tweaks we've suggested here volition definitely increase performance and with no negative side furnishings. Proceed with caution deploying tweaks you find in other guides and in discussion forum posts. And remember: Modernistic SSDs may have limited writes, but they're far less express than the SSDs of old—so sometime advice about avoiding things that write to your drive are pretty outdated. Y'all'll probably supercede your computer before you come even shut to wearing out your SSD!

Congratulations! You've cloned your disk, saved yourself hours of reinstalling Windows and customizing your apps, and you're ready to savor a faster and quieter system disk.