I'm looking around the Internet for answers, but the smartest computer people I know are all right here on this forum, so I hope you don't mind me asking a Windows10 question in the general discussion forum here.

My Christmas present to myself this year was to purchase a couple of SSD drives, as well as 2 mSATA pcb's and a 5 volt PATA to mSATA adapter, which I plan to install in my G4 PowerBook with one of the two 256gb mSATA cards.

My question though concerns my Windows10 laptop, which is a Dell 17R model that is a few years old and has two 2.5" hard drive bays, plus a mSATA slot. It came with a 1tb hdd when I bought it, but boots and loads large data sets slowly due to the 5400 rotating speed, so I want to transfer Windows10 and a couple of my applications to the 128gb SSD drive, and leave the rest of my apps and data on the 1tb hdd, so it will boot and run faster. When the 256gb mSATA card arrives, I want to install Hackintosh and MacOS10.7 on it, plus a partition for the latest version of AmiKit hosted on Linux to run Rabbit Hole, so I can run Linux apps from the AmigaOS3.9 desktop.

My question is what is the best way to transfer Windows10 and all my settings and preferences, plus 1 or 2 applications/games, to the 128gb SSD drive, so I can then reformat the 1tb drive to use only for data storage? Keep in mind my goal to later make this laptop a triple booting system, when my 256gb mSATA cards arrive.

Also, for anyone looking for a cheap mSATA card, NewEgg has them on sale right now for only $79 for a 256gb size mSATA.

Hi amigadave,

There is a lot of free tools out there for cloning windows installation.

Search for windows 10 cloning tool...

Beware, most of those stuff might be adware clutered.

Also, Most of them requires that the destination drive be at least the size of the source... Dunno how your 1TB is partitionned, but 128GB is a call for trouble imo with Windows 10...

From my own experience, most of cloning tools needs to operate on the same size of hard drives. I gave up, did the clean installation on new hard drive. Much less hassle to be honest.

Amigadave: I really hope your Windows partition system is less than 128 Gb... You could obviously migrate all W10 and application parameters with :

EaseUS Todo Backup (free version)

http://www.todo-backup.com/backup-resource/data-transfer/migrate-windows-10-to-ssd.htm

You could also use Casper or Acronis Trueimage (they are paid, but have a free trial for limited time) or other cloning software.

http://www.fssdev.com/ Casper 8.0

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/ Acronis Trueimage 2016

Good luck and happy new year ;P

Arnaud

When it comes to Windows 10 I trust only Barnacules Nerdgasm (15years employed by M$)

important information here
https://youtu.be/u1kGMCfb2xw

I'd take the opportunity to do a fresh install. Windows needs this occasionally anyway, if not carefully cultivated. Back upp your important data (you probably have things like photos etc saved on a raided NAS anyway, right? ), install Windows fresh on your SSD, restore the data and spend a day or two to install the latest versions of the drivers and the programs you need and set everything up the way you want it to be and are accustomed to. IMHO this is a boring process, but it's worth it in the end.

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What brand is your SSD?

The reason I am asking is that some manufacturers provide the necessary software for free to customers owning specific SSD models. Samsung, for example, provide their "Samsung Data Migration" software.

I just went through the same process myself few seconds ago. I've cloned my Win10 installation from small SSD (64GB) to 240GB one. I used EaseUS Todo Backup (free version) (thanks _bigdan_ !).

Just make sure to use option (clone sector by sector) option while cloning drives.

I use macrium reflect free for cloning .... really great.

[ Edited by Simon 30.12.2015 - 14:22 ]

Pampers : thanks for the return and "Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku 2016"

Simon : never tested macrium reflect but it seems great according to online tests !

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Acronis or EaseUS backup. After that may have to change some registry settings to tell Windows you're running on an SSD.

Be aware though - that 128 gb drive is just too small. Win10 isn't particularly massive but you'll really, really struggle.

Thanks for all the answers and advice from everyone. The Transcend SSD and Crucial mSATA's came with software for cloning my hdd, but I am leaning toward going with a fresh install, though I hate having to re-install everything from scratch.

The 256gb mSATA pcb's have arrived (one for my Windows laptop, and one for my G4 PowerBook), so I am thinking of installing Windows 10 on the 256gb mSATA, and using the 128gb SSD drive for an alternate OS installation, if I decide to go ahead with a Hackintosh install, or maybe a Linux hosted AmigaOS3.9 installation.

Anyone who has a great multi boot setup and wants to share how they did it and what boot loader they are using, I would appreciate their advice.