HDD cloning
HDD cloning
Ahoy hoy! After some great suggestions and a second pair of eyes I managed to figure out my posting problem was related to the PSU, once replaced I got everything up. Hooked up my old HDD and the new SSD. When I tried to boot it didn't register me old HDD as a boot option, so I unhooked it an installed a fresh windows copy on the SSD, an was able to get it up an runnin, rebooked the old HDD and can see both now, but anything on my desktop or any program on the old one isn't really accessible. What's the best way to get my old HDD moved to the new SSD?
Not the answer you want, but I'd suggest not reusing your Windows install.
Copy the files from the old to the new, and reinstall applivations.
Reusing the same OS install on a different box just leads to weirdness.
Makes sense, best practice to grab the stuffs from the desktop an other things not as easy to move over?
at a minimum, grab the contents of desktop, downloads, documents, pictures, music, and videos folders. they should be present in each user profile folder on the 'old' drive.
copy the contents of each into their proper places on your 'new' windows disk or to a backup drive and folder to copy over later.
I can only second CameronDev, if the old machine is dead then copy files and reinstall your programs.
In a situation where the old and new computer can both be started the transwiz tool from forensit saves time:
https://www.forensit.com/downloads.htmli'm fresh with this kind of adventures, bought new m.2 ssd, USB enclosure, yesterday i cloned old one to the new one (1TB Crucial P1 -> 2TB Kingston KC3000, both "come with" Acronis, so i used it), popped the new one in and BOOM, INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE, tried some workarounds but i ended up just installing new windows copy, welp it might be actually better solution because it's clean install obviously, but i'm just lazy:)
When just switching ssd it's perfect to clone the drive instead of reinstalling. My recommendation is to use a clonezilla Live USB.
There's also rescuezilla which has a GUI, I haven't tried it myself though.