Alienware 18 SSD upgrade.

Hi guys, I've recently purchased an Alienware 18 which has a 750gb HDD. I'm wanting to add a crucial 250GB SSD but want the SSD as my boot drive and the HDD as my storage device. How would I go about this? I have a cloning kit which I could use to transfer all my exsisting data from the HDD to the SSD and then format the HDD. Is this correct? All advice appreciated in advance.

 

Yes, cloning the drive would be the easiest method to do the switch. You will need to ensure the data on your existing drive is < 250GB, also you may need to run a defrag to allow the drive size to be shrunk to 250GB (shrink drive size using 'Computer Management' in windows). In saying that, there is most likely cloning software that will shrink the drive size and reshuffle the data automatically?

Once cloned, check that 'Trim' is enabled on the new SSD and also check that the new SSD's partition is aligned. Also, change the boot priority in the BIOS to point to the SSD.

That should get you started on the right foot.

 

Macrium Reflect has a tool that will allow you to reduce the size of the drive you want to clone so that it fits into your SSD. After that drag each partition from the top "current" drive to the lower "new" drive. In the same order they are currently in and then just click on "clone this drive" There is a really good guide on YouTube that I can't find at the moment on my phone but go there and do a search, lots of quick guides and it pretty easy. This is Macrium Reflect free version by the way. Should be able to put the SSD in the current slot and the existing HDD in the 2nd slot.

Just to add, you might have to format and erase the original HDD before reboot so it doesn't attempt to boot from that. Not sure if that is still an issue if you change the slots they are in, either way, make a system recovery disk first just in case.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys. I have a 750gb hdd and reset windows yesterday to factory settings. Installed a few benchmark programs and tried to install bf4 but when it got to like 90% I got a pop up window saying I need to free up some space on my hdd as it's nearly full? Surely this is incorrect as I did a reset so all old files should have been deleted. What's your thoughts on this?

 

How much free space is in the 750GB hdd?

 

Over 550GB now. Found a file under other named "reset_safetodelete_overwritespacefile" deletes this and now have plenty of room.

 

Odd but glad you got it sorted out.