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Help installing a new ssd

treyu86treyu86 Member UncommonPosts: 270
in Hardware
Hi all. I just bought a new ssd (SSD 970 EVO NVMe M.2). I have my windows and games installed in an older sata ssd. My question is, can I just install the new ssd and move the games I play to the new one, or is it mandatory (cause not doing it means much less improvement) to reinstall the whole windows into the new ssd? 

thanks in advance

Comments

  • laxielaxie Member RarePosts: 1,122
    You can just put the drive in. It doesn't matter for the games at all. The only question is whether or not you want your system (windows) to run off the nvme too - in which case you'd want to reinstall into the nvme.

    From my experience, a SATA SSD is quite fast for the system already. So if you're happy to have the system as fast as it is currently, you don't need to move it.
  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 32,779
    treyu86 said:
    Hi all. I just bought a new ssd (SSD 970 EVO NVMe M.2). I have my windows and games installed in an older sata ssd. My question is, can I just install the new ssd and move the games I play to the new one, or is it mandatory (cause not doing it means much less improvement) to reinstall the whole windows into the new ssd? 

    thanks in advance

    That's what I did. Just installed the 2nd one and installed games directly to it. If you have steam you might want to "uninstall" on the main drive and then you can choose to install on the other drive by making a steam library there.

    Having said that, it's a little more (though easy) than just plugging everything in and you're set.

    Go to about 5:26 on this video and this should help you with initializing the disk if you don't already know how to do that.



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  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    edited June 2021
    Samsung has some available software that makes copying SSDs pretty easy - it can basically clone your old one to  your new one, if you wanted to put Windows on your fastest and freshest drive. 

    It's not quite as good as just doing a clean Windows install, but it's a lot less hassle. There are other free tools that exist out there as well, but Samsung happens to bundle a decent one with their drives (or rather, they make it available for download and it only works if it detects your Samsung drive).

    https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

    That said, as @laxie and @Sovrath have mentioned - your old SSD is probably still plenty fast, so you wouldn't really gain anything in speed. But I'd figure I'd post how to do it in case you were interested.

    I'll also throw a shout out to SteamMover

    https://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

    Back in the day before Steam would let you pick install locations, people used Symlinks to "trick" Windows - Windows thinks the files are still in the old install location, but in reality that just points to their new home on your speed new SSD. Symlinks are built into Windows, so they are prefectly safe to use, it's just they are a bit arcane using the command line - SteamMover just automates the process and puts a nice GUI on the front end of it. 

    It lets you "move" your files without needing to re-download or re-install, and it works for anything, not just Steam - despite the name.
  • treyu86treyu86 Member UncommonPosts: 270
    thanks all for the replies :)
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