Moving Win7 Applications to New PC with SSD and Regular HD

Hi everyone,

I have an older PC with Win7 and XP dual boot on a 640GB HD. Recently built a new quad core PC and installed Win7 on a 60GB SSD. There is also a new 640GB HD for applications and data.

Spent quite a bit of time searching for the best method of transferring the applications and data setting from the old PC with single HD to the new PC's with SSD and HD. PCMove and True Image are mentioned as options but not sure how they can handle 2 destination drives. I dread the thought of adding each application one by one. Hope others have a good approach and willing to share their thoughts.


Thanks,
Art

You will need to re-install your apps, data can be copied to wherever you wish to on the 2 drive setup.

IF you were going from the 640G to a new 640G (or larger) you could clone your old drive but the way you have things setup you will need to re-install your apps. Cloning doesn't work well with SSDs anyway due to partition alignment problems.

I would install programs only to the OS drive as they write keys to the registry which essentially integrate them into the OS. Then if your OS becomes irreparable, you only need to reimage it to the SSD and the data is ready to go in it's separate vault/partition.


You should be able to just drag data to corresponding User folders on the data HD, then change the location in Properties as shown in this tutorial: User Folders - Change Default Location

Thank you all for the excellent advice. I am in the process reinstalling the apps.

A few other tips:

Don't let programs write themselves into msconfig>Startup list as they become freeloaders at all times on your RAM/CPU and can spy on you. I only allow AV and gadgets/stikynotes.

Use a lightweight free AV like MS Security Essentials with the Windows FIrewall for few problems and no impact on performance.

When your set up, clean and order the HD perfectly using state-of-the-art free CCleaner and Auslogics Disk and Registry defraggers monthly. Then save externally a Win7 Backup Image so you never have to reinstall again.