How To Copy Your Windows Installation To An SSD

Are you still using a traditional spinning hard disk on your computer? You’re missing out. Swapping it for a solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the best upgrades you can make in terms of speeding up your computer. Your computer will boot faster, programs will launch instantly, and games won’t take so long to load.

- Whitson Gordon

You could reinstall your Windows installation from scratch and start new with a fresh, squeaky-clean system. Although that seems simpler, it’s actually more of a hassle. As long as you follow these instructions to the letter, you should be back up and running in no time, with all your data intact.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO GET STARTED

An SSD: Obviously, in order to upgrade to an SSD, you’ll need to, well, buy an SSD. Make sure to buy one big enough to fit all your data—if you have a 500GB hard drive now, you should probably spring for a similarly sized SSD. The only exception is when you’re on a desktop computer and have room for multiple hard drives. In that case, you could store Windows and your programs on the SSD while putting your music, movies, and other data on a second, larger hard disk.

A USB-to-SATA Dock: During this process, you’ll need both your SSD and your old hard drive connected to your computer at the same time. If you’re using a laptop with only one hard drive slot, that means you’ll need an external adapter, dock, or enclosure that can connect your bare SSD to your computer over USB. (Desktop users may not need this if they have room for two drives inside their PC—you can just install it internally alongside your old hard drive.)