Possibly Installing an SSD Into My Newer PC

Lurch · Post by **Lurch** » Mon Nov 11, 2019 6:48 pm

I hope this is posted on the right forum.

I gave my Dell GX620 with Win7 away to a PC guy today.
I also took my new Dell 7010 SFF PC there with i5-3470 and 250 GB HD in it, 8 GB RAM and Win 10 and asked how much he'd charge to install my SSD into it.
He said it would be about $163 = $100 for labor and about $60 for a new version of Win 10 with license.
I wasn't planning to spend that much on this bc mainly, I love the way my i5-3470 runs with 8 GB of RAM and the onboard 250 GB HD and Win 10.

But I have a feeling I could do this myself and it wouldn't cost me a nickel. Is that right?
SanDisk helped my clone Win7 from a spindle HD and it worked great. If I can back up my Win10 to my external WD HD, and then physically remove the HD from the 7010, and then install the SSD with Win 7 on it, format the SSD, and then install the Win 10 from my eternal WD HD?

It sounds complicated but SanDisk were glad to help with their free Acronis Cloning Software bc evidently lots of people are doing this to take advantage of the new technology in the SSDs.

TIA for any advice on this.

But I wouldn't mind running the i5 as is. It runs better than my Dell 960 with 4 GB RAM, Win10, and 250 GB SSD.

Post by **Philip** » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:35 am

You should be able to clone the HDD to a SSD. I usually use "Macrium Reflect Free". I usually perform a disk cleanup (including system files) before cloning.

First you connect your SSD as a secondary drive, then clone the HDD to it, after you reboot with only the SSD to test it out.

The biggest hurdle usually is making a bigger drive fit into a smaller one, you'd have to reduce some partitions. You have to copy all partitions from the source HDD to the destination SSD (you can reorder them, so that the Windows partition is last, that way you can change its size to fit the new drive). Once the cloning is complete, unplug your HDD and let the machine boot from the SSD to test it out.. You can then re-partition your HDD.

Lurch · Post by **Lurch** » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:43 am

But my i5-3470 PC will supposedly only take one drive at a time.
Can't install both drives into it at the same time, is what the guy at the PC shop told me.

Post by **Philip** » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:55 am

I highly doubt it... Open the box and see how many SATA ports there are on the motherboard, most have at least two (even the Dell MoBos in my experience). Note that one will be connected to the HDD, the other may be connected to a DVD drive. You can disconnect the DVD drive temporarily and use it for the SSD. Or, if you have an available SATA port just use that.

Lurch · Post by **Lurch** » Tue Nov 12, 2019 9:22 pm

PK thank you. I'll look inside and see what I can tell.
I may have to resort to youtube videos to show me how to do it.

morbidpete · Post by **morbidpete** » Tue Nov 19, 2019 11:12 am

you could temporarily use the power and sata cable from the ODD to run the second drive for cloning.