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It’s been more than a decade since the first SSDs started to hit the consumer market and about 10 years since they began arriving at price points that could broadly be called “consumer-friendly.” Now, SSDs have gotten inexpensive enough that buying a 1TB drive is more of an impulse purchase than a serious financial outlay. If you’ve already bought a new SSD or are wondering if you should pull the trigger, we’ll walk you through deciding how to move your data to your new storage device and the best ways to do it.
The simplest way to upgrade from a smaller SSD (or HDD) to a larger one is to pull the old drive, install your new drive, and then install your version of Windows from scratch onto the empty drive. We’re not spending too much time on this upgrade path. Still, if you want to go this route, our article on how to uninstall Windows 10 should be helpful to you — particularly the “Look Before You Leap” section for advice on which files and data to back up before starting fresh.
SATA SSDs used to be the norm, but now M.2 NVME SSDs (pictured) have taken their place and require zero cables.
Credit: Molly Flores
The advantage of starting over from scratch is getting a clean OS image and a cruft-free SSD for maximum performance. This is also the only practical option if you’re upgrading a laptop with a single drive bay. The disadvantage is losing an easy way to access old files if needed unless you invest in an external USB enclosure for your old drive.
Another option, if you have the chassis space, is to install your new SSD and put a clean OS install on it, but keep your previous drive hooked up and available. Think of this as a best-of-both-worlds approach. We can’t guarantee the apps installed on your old SSD will still work without a reinstall, as they typically need to be installed on your OS drive to access the Windows registry, but your downloads, saved files, and documents will still be available. We tend to go this route when we upgrade or change storage solutions, and while it doesn’t work for everything, it’s a quick way to solve the problem.
But what if you don’t want more than one drive, and you don’t want more than one drive in your system when you’re done? The best way to deal with this problem is to use cloning software. Disk cloning software can make a perfect image of a current SSD or HDD installation.
Concerning Windows 11
Before the launch of Windows 11, it was thought the OS’s new TPM 2.0 restrictions might cause issues with drive-to-drive cloning that weren’t an issue with Windows 10. Now that we’ve been using it for over a year and have cloned several drives, we’re happy to report that most cloning software should work fine. However, your mileage may vary, so be sure to Google your specific cloning software before you try it. Once you’re ready to move forward, here are some instructions for Windows 10 and 11.
First, there’s a difference between a disk clone and an image of a drive. A clone isn’t just an archive or backup of your current SSD and shouldn’t be mistaken for it. Simply creating an archival backup of existing data is a good idea, but it is not a disk image and won’t work for transferring an OS installation to a new drive. Instead, it’ll drop a lump of compressed files on your new SSD.
To create a true one-to-one copy of your existing drive, you need to make an image of it. This is a snapshot of the entire drive, which includes all installed programs, the operating system, desktop wallpaper, files, etc. Your whole system is saved as a single file, so once it’s copied to the new drive, you’ll have two drives with the same content, including files needed to make the device bootable.
To accomplish this task—making a disk image—you’ll need third-party software. We’ve used Acronis True Image several times, but several utilities are available to perform this kind of service. Wikipedia has a reasonable comparison of the various major applications.
Acronis has long been a reliable cloning tool, but your new SSD might also include a free cloning utility.
Credit: Acronis
Some SSDs include a free disk cloning utility to simplify the upgrade process. Samsung’s software, for example, is straightforward to use and works incredibly well, even if you don’t quite know how to use it. The process is as simple as running the utility, pointing drive A at drive B, and letting it do its thing.
Also, you don’t need to worry about having both drives installed inside your PC to use a disk cloning utility; it’s not a problem to clone to (or from) an external drive connected via a USB 3 dock. It may take slightly longer since USB transfer speeds are less than SATA or M.2, but the process is the same. As long as the OS and software recognize the drive in the dock, it can be used in a cloning operation.
Newer SSDs are all M.2 NVME drives like this one, and are installed into slots on your motherboard.
Credit: Zlata Ivleva/PCMag
Once the clone is complete, you’ll be able to remove your old drive and put it in storage (we’d recommend not throwing it away, but we’re paranoid about data loss), and your new hardware should boot and be the same as you had it on your old storage device. As system transplants go, the entire process is usually pretty painless.
One last tidbit: If you are moving from SSD to SSD, don’t expect quite the same “Wow!” factor you got after moving from a conventional hard drive to an SSD. While newer SSDs are indisputably faster than older ones, the noticeable performance improvement simply won’t be as significant. You may still get a performance bump out of the jump, but the main benefits of an SSD-to-SSD upgrade are getting a bit more capacity and reliability that come with installing a brand new SSD.