How to transfer the operating system and programs from HDD to SSD. Transferring Windows to another empty hard drive with AOMEI Partition Assistant Programs for transferring windows to ssd

Moving your system to an SSD is an effective way to organize your computer.

Content:

Please note that depending on the version of Windows and the parameters of the purchased flash drive, transfer methods may vary.

What data can be transferred to SSD

Storing the operating system on an SSD not only speeds up its operation, but also improves the response of other programs and files that are stored on the disk.

The user can transfer the following types of data to a flash drive:

Operating system . It is added to the SSD with all ready-made drivers and settings. In essence, a duplicate of it is created, which was previously stored on the HDD;
Programs – choose yourself which applications you want to add to and which you want to leave on (HDD). We advise you to leave extensive programs for video editing and software development/testing on your computer - this way they will work many times faster;
User files . This can be any of your documents, photos, music, videos and other types of data.

Components to move

To add Windows in use to the SSD, the following objects are required:

If you only work with OS resources, you won't need to install a third-party utility to transfer.

Computer requirements

Before you perform any OS migration steps, make sure that your device meets all the minimum requirements that allow the utility to interact with the SSD and transfer large amounts of data.

The minimum requirements are shown in the following table:

Parameter name:	Minimum value:
OS	· Windows XP (32x only); · Windows Vista (all bits); · Windows 7 (all bits); · Windows 8\8.1 (all bits); · Windows 10 (all bits).
RAM	At least 1GB
Types of drives you carry	GPT or MBR
Copied sections	Standard. Without the ability to transfer RAID arrays

You can compare your computer's settings with the specifications listed above using the About window.

It displays correct data about the main hardware and software components of the device:

We use the built-in capabilities of Windows

Follow the instructions to transfer the operating system to a flash device:

Open the window "Disk Management". To do this, enter the command diskmgmt.msc in the Run window and confirm the action;

Fig.3 - launching disk management tool

Now you need to reduce the size of the OS on the disk. You can perform this action using the Shrink Volume function. All data will remain in the same state, only the space occupied on the HDD will decrease. Right-click on the “System” section, and then on “Shrink Volume”;

Fig.4 - Volume compression

After successfully reducing the size of the OS, a free partition will appear in the disk layout. This means that everything was done correctly;
Connect the drive to your computer and reboot the window "Disk Management";
Now click on the “Wizard” tab and select “OS SSD Transfer” from the list;

Fig.5 - “Master” tab

The standard utility for . Click on the "Next" button to go to the settings;
Click on the item "Unoccupied space" and go to the next window;

Fig.6 – disk space selection

Now you can independently change the size of the future disk or leave all parameters unchanged;

Fig.7 - changing the disk partition size

After clicking the “Next” button, the wizard will begin moving the system. After completing the action, you can turn off the computer and the next time you boot, select the OS that is located on the SSD.

Windows will also remain on the hard drive. You can delete it or use it as a backup copy when you need to restore the system.

Fig. 8 - the result of a successful Windows move

Don't forget to click on the "Apply" button in the upper left part of the window "Disk Management", otherwise all changes made will not be saved.

If you experience any error windows or freezes during the transfer, you should reset the settings, restart your PC, and try the transfer again.

Fig.9 - applying changes

Instructions for SSD from Samsung

The company has released an official utility that allows you to quickly move the OS from your hard drive to a purchased flash drive.

The utility is called Samsung Data Migration. You can download it for free from the company’s official website (section “Memory” - “SSD”) or using the disk that comes with the device.

The initial program window looks like this:

Fig. 10 – Samsung Data Migration utility window

Immediately after launching the utility, connect the SSD to your computer using the appropriate adapter. Click on the “Start” button.

Fig. 11 – analysis of a disk with an installed copy of Windows

After analysis, the program will automatically detect the SSD connected to the computer and display it on the screen:

Fig. 12 – reconciliation of the source and destination disk

If the space occupied by Windows on the HDD does not exceed the available space on the SSD, you can immediately begin the transfer by clicking on the “Start” button.

The automatic movement of all components will begin. The procedure can take from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on the version of Windows used.

Fig. 13 - successful system transfer

As a result, you will receive a success notification. Close the window and delete all Windows data from the HDD.

The advantage of using Samsung Data Migration is its simple interface. The program will do all the work for you and minimize the likelihood of errors or bugs appearing after transferring the OS.

What to do if during the analysis stage you find that there is not enough space for the OS on the SSD? In this case, you need to clean Windows of unused data and applications.

You can do this directly in the Samsung Data Migration utility window.

Fig. 14 - Error. Not enough SSD space

After the error text appears (highlighted in red), click on the “Next” button and in a new window, delete all library files that are cluttering the system.

Clean the OS until the text appears in the main utility window "Ready to clone to SSD".

Fig. 15 – successful cleaning of unnecessary files

Acronis True Image utility

Acroins is the most popular utility for transferring an OS to removable media. It recognizes all SSD brands. The application is supported by all versions of Windows, so there will be no compatibility problems.

Remember, you can only use the application if your PC hardware has a disk from the manufacturer Acronis.

If a component is missing, the utility will not start, and the user will be notified that it is impossible to work with the program.

Fig. 16 – main window of the Acroins application

To move the system, connect the removable drive to the computer and click on the tile in the program window "Disk cloning"-"Copying partitions".

In the window that opens, select automatic movement mode. It is suitable for all tasks and copies data quickly.

Fig.17 - selection of cloning mode

All sections will be copied to . All data that was on the SSD before cloning will be deleted.

The disk itself will become bootable and can only be used to run operating systems installed on it.

Fig. 18 – copying process

Seagate DiscWizard utility

The utility completely replicates the Acronis interface. It must be used if your PC has at least one hard drive from the manufacturer Seagate.

To clone, you should follow the same steps as described in the previous paragraph of the article.

Fig. 19 – Seagate Disc Wizard main window

Changing bootloader configuration

After cloning the system, a copy of the OS will remain on the computer, and every time you boot, a window will appear with a boot selection. After the transfer, we recommend that you perform a number of actions:

Without deleting the original copy from the HDD, test the operation of Windows on the HDD. There are times when the system starts to slow down and performance deteriorates. This happens extremely rarely and depends solely on the selected SSD. As long as the first copy is not deleted, you will always have the opportunity to return to using it and remove the OS from the SSD;
Change your system bootloader settings.

The boot manager is a built-in component that helps your computer determine which installed operating system to run. You can also configure the startup order of hardware components.

Immediately after, the manager will show two systems with identical names - the original and the copied one.

If Windows runs normally on an SSD, you need to remove the version that remains on the computer’s hard drive. Follow the instructions:

Restart your PC and run the version that was moved to the flash drive;
Open ;
Enter the command shown in the figure below, giving the OS copies on the SSD a unique name;

Fig.20 - command for renaming the bootloader component

Now configure the dispatcher so that it always launches the new OS first. You can do this using the following command:

Fig. 21 – automatic launch of the cloned OS

To remove the old system, enter the following command (where ID is the number of the old copy of the OS in the bootloader list):

Fig. 22 - deleting the original copy of Windows

Bottom line

As you can see, to transfer the system to a removable flash drive, you just need to use a universal utility for duplicating components or perform the move yourself.

Don't forget to delete the boot record of a disk that is no longer in use. If this is not done, errors may occur when turning on the OS.

Users who have migrated their system to an SSD note increased computer performance and faster completion of complex tasks and processes.

The loading speed of the operating system increases by 2-3 times.

Thematic videos:

How to connect an SSD to a desktop computer. Transferring Windows from HDD to SSD

Correctly connecting an SSD drive to a personal desktop computer. How to quickly transfer Windows OS from a hard disk drive (HDD) to a solid state drive (SSD). Practical advice, performance assessment after replacing with an SSD.

Laptop hard drive HDD SSD system transfer free

Laptop hard drive HDD SSD system transfer + system cloning program

Those who buy SSD drives to replace their HDD hard drive, or even several, are one way or another faced with the issue of transferring the operating system from the old drive to the new one. After all, for example, you have a computer where Windows is installed on the HDD. Having purchased an SSD, you want the system to now boot from it. In this article I will show a couple of ways to transfer a system from HDD to SSD, which I tried to use myself.

SSD is a solid-state drive, a storage device that replaced old HDD hard drives. These disks, compared to HDDs, have a much higher write speed, smaller size and weight. The main disadvantages are that the cost of one gigabyte is several times higher than that of HDDs, and they also have a much shorter recording resource (wear resistance).

Transferring a Windows system from HDD to SSD

Transferring a system from an HDD to an SSD is actually a simple process, but sometimes you have to face various problems.

There are only 2 stages in this process:

Connect the SSD drive to the computer;

Perform a system transfer using one of the programs designed for this.

Stage No. 1. Connecting an SSD drive to a computer along with an HDD

Well, in stage No. 1, no problems are usually observed. You can connect an SSD to a computer in the same way as a HDD (with SATA connectors), in this regard they are no different.

If you bought an SSD for a laptop, then it may be that the laptop does not have a compartment for connecting a second drive. In this case, there are several options:

An SSD can be connected via a USB connector by purchasing a special adapter (USB-SATA), or a box for an external drive (a box into which the drive itself is inserted and can be connected to the computer via a regular USB cable). This adapter and/or box for an external drive may come in handy again.

If, along with a laptop, you also have a desktop computer, then you can connect both drives to it in order to transfer the system directly through that computer.

You can first boot from the old HDD and make a full image of the system disk using a special program, transfer this image to some external hard drive that can be connected via USB, and then use the program to start recovery to the new SSD disk.

This, in my opinion, is the most inconvenient option. Moreover, when using this option, all programs that allow you to transfer the system directly from one disk to another are eliminated, and only programs that allow you to create a disk image and then restore it to another disk remain.

Stage No. 2. System transfer

This stage is simple, but sometimes you cannot do without problems and questions...

So, to transfer the system from HDD to SSD, you need a special program. There are several options, I have only tried 3 so far:

Transfer through a special program from the SSD developer.

I consider this the most optimal and simplest option, since with such a transfer there are usually no problems or difficulties.

All you need to do is go to the website of the developer of the SSD you purchased and see if there is a special program for transferring the system. If there is one, quickly perform the transfer using it and rejoice :)

Example.

We bought an SSD disk “Samsung SSD 850 Evo Sata III MZ-75E250BW”. We see that the developer is Samsung, which means you need to look for the program on their website. Either through the site menu, find the purchased disk model, or in Google or Yandex search we try to type the full name of the model and probably one of the first lines of the search results will contain a link to the page of the desired disk on the developer’s website.

And then on the site we look for the file download section. It can be called differently. For example, on the Samsung website on the page of each model there is a section “Instructions and Downloads”, where there are various files for download, including the Data Migration Tool transfer program (each developer may have a different name!).

Having found the desired program, download it, install it, select the disk from which you are transferring the system and the connected new SSD disk. All you have to do is wait for the operation to complete.

Programs for transferring a system to an SSD are unique to each developer, so more precise instructions cannot be given here. But these programs are as simple as possible, with the most minimal set of settings, and therefore no questions should arise.

Transfer through special disk-to-disk system migration programs from developers specializing in programs for working with disks and partitions.

One such program is Paragon Migrate OS to SSD. This is a specialized program that allows you to easily, without any complex settings, transfer the system from one disk to another (in our case, to an SSD). Suitable for any discs.

There is only one drawback of this method - the program is paid, but it is quite inexpensive, considering that it can be useful more than once.

You can find out the current price and purchase the program on the official website of the developer:

Installing the program is very simple, I won’t go into detail here. You can read about the general process of installing programs for Windows.

After starting the program there will be a warning that from the target disk, i.e. All data will be deleted from the one to which you are transferring the system. Well, if you just purchased an SSD disk, you are unlikely to write anything to it, but if it is some old disk, then keep this warning in mind and do not forget in this case to first transfer all the data from the target disk somewhere to a safe place !

In the next window, select the target disk and click “Next”.

Select the source disk, i.e. from where the system will be transferred is not possible, since the program itself determines which system is loaded and will only transfer it.

Transfer through special programs designed for backup. One such program is Acronis True Image, which is very popular. The program is paid, it costs much more than, for example, the above-mentioned Paragon Migrate OS to SSD. But its functionality is also very impressive, because it solves a lot of problems related to backup and recovery at once, and not just system transfer.

I have already written several articles about this program and they are easy to find by typing “acronis” in the blog search.

This program is good, but, as my personal experience has shown, it is not always suitable for transferring a system from HDD to SSD. I came across situations where it was not possible to transfer a system through this program, for reasons unknown to me.

There are, of course, other programs in the same backup category, but many of them also cost money. So I prefer one of the methods above.

Conclusion

Most likely, if you need to transfer your system to a new SSD, you can use option No. 1, because the developers of these drives often provide their own programs for transferring the system. If it doesn’t work out, I think option No. 2 will definitely help, at least through another program specialized for migrating a system from HDD to SSD.

In this tutorial, we will tell you how to transfer Windows from your HDD (hard drive) to an SSD. There are many programs for migrating Windows, for example: Acronis True Image, Paragon Migrate OS to SSD, Paragon Home Expert and AOMEI Partition Assistant Home Edition and many others.

We will analyze the most basic method of migrating Windows from HDD to SSD using the program Paragon Migrate OS to SSD using Windows 7 as an example.

We go to the official website and download the program; the program is paid, or you can download it for free from torrent trackers.

Creating disk partitions

So, we go to the computer’s disk control panel, as shown in the example of this picture, there is an HDD - a 250 GB hard drive divided into two partitions, on the “C:” drive there is Windows OS. We will transfer it to an SSD - a 120 GB solid-state drive with unallocated space.

Before you transfer Windows to you need to create a partition on the disk to which you want to transfer the OS. Right-click on the disk on which you are going to create a partition and select " Create a simple volume".

Further.

We don’t touch anything here “Next”.

There is also “Next” here.

The section has been created. We wrote a more detailed method for creating partitions in a separate article.

Migrate Windows from HDD to SSD using Paragon Migrate OS to SSD

Launch the program Paragon Migrate OS to SSD"Further".

Select SSD "Next".

Please pay attention to this point" Use all available space for the OS partition". If you check this box, then your operating system will take up all the available space on this disk and you will not be able to create other partitions on this disk.

If you have a larger SSD disk, more than 120 GB, and you will further divide the disk into partitions, then you can not check this box. For small disks, it is better, of course, to use all the available space for the OS, since there is no point in dividing a disk with a small volume into partitions.

Select the Format option and click “Next”.

The transfer of Windows to the SSD disk begins. This process is long, so you will have to wait a little.

The Windows migration procedure is complete.

As you can see, this is what we got: Windows has been successfully transferred to the solid-state drive.

Good afternoon or pleasant evening, dear friends, acquaintances, regular and not so regular readers, and simply other individuals. Today we have a topic that has long been in demand by many, judging by your letters.

In this article (which, I hope, will not expand into several parts, which will be clear from your comments) I want to tell you how you can comfortably move to an SSD with a capacity of just, say, 60 GB without reinstalling the system and its reconfiguration from scratch.. Well, or how to simply move from disk to disk.

What you need to migrate Windows

Let's start with a little warning, because, as they say: " Forewarned is forearmed".

Note:

You follow the advice from this article at your own peril and risk, because sometimes the best solution is to simply reinstall everything. However, if you do everything according to the instructions, then there should be no problems.

So, when everyone is up to date with the events, we can move on to the list of software/equipment that we will need (I hope there is no need to explain why to put the drive on an SSD at all, they say that they are fast and all that).. However, you can familiarize yourself with our little note: "".

Anyway, to the point. Let's simulate the situation: You are the owner of an SSD drive with a capacity of 60 GB and a HDD drive, say, 500 GB, which is divided into volumes (one of which is system) and you really need to move to an SSD without reinstalling the system.

Let's see, in fact, what is needed for this.

From the pieces of iron we need:

The SSD drive itself. In this example, it is KINGSTON SV300S37A60G with a capacity of 60 GB;
Any other drive with a capacity of more than 60 GB (you can even take a 64 GB flash drive). We need it to make a backup copy of the system, first in its original version, and then in the (“disfigured”) version in which it will be at the end of our relatively lengthy algorithm;

From the software we need:

Acronis True Image Home (for example, 2013) is the main tool for us, with which we will build our own life preserver in the form of a system backup. Warning against the cries that this tool is not free, I would like to offer a 30-day trial version to help you. Of course, I understand that Rome was not built in a month, but 30 days is enough not only for our entire algorithm, but also for creating a boot disk (which, by the way, we simply need, especially if we don’t have another hard drive at hand). disk from which a working system could be booted);
Acronis Disk Director 11 Home is also an irreplaceable program for us in this matter (however, there are also its analogues). With the help of this joy of life, we will resize disk volumes, as well as copy or move a disk volume. Regarding the paidness of this product, in fact, we look above, 30 days of freebies will help you;
ProgDir, is a small utility for editing the registry. We use it, in this case, to move the default installation path to the location we need;
SteamMover, is a small utility for transferring our programs from the system disk to another (while maintaining their functionality);
Driver Sweeper is a program designed to remove drivers; there was a separate article on how to use it on our resource; it is highly recommended that you read it (available).

It seems that we have figured out the software part of our toolkit. So we can proceed further.

Algorithm, process and actions

Let's start with a description of the algorithm of our actions:

We take a backup copy of the system in working form;
We are building the foundation, that is, creating additional folders and doing other necessary preparations;
We clean the system, that is, we kill everything unnecessary, remove browsers and other software that we do not use;
Copy or move the system volume;
We optimize the operation of SSD;
We additionally install the programs we need;
We take a backup copy of the working system.

Does everything seem simple? In fact, everything would be like this if not for one “but”: things don’t always go exactly as planned. Therefore, each of the points will be described in detail below, where I will try to identify all the pitfalls that may be hidden on the thorny path of executing the algorithm described above.

Step 1. Take a backup copy of the system.
Our many-hour journey begins by creating a starting point to which, if we suddenly break something, we can always return. As mentioned above, Acronis True Image Home is responsible for creating a backup copy (we will not dwell on the installation of this miracle of programmer thought, since everything is quite simple there).

So let's start from the point where we launch the shortcut on the desktop and in the program itself click on the "Backups" section, where we see the following:

That is, either your old backups (in the screenshot above), or just empty space (if you have never created backups through this program before).

While we are waiting for the backup to complete, in general, you can drink some coffee (or whatever you drink or smoke), and then move on to the next point.

Step 2. Building the foundation.
Perhaps the simplest point. It involves creating additional folders (or a separate disk volume) to store our programs.

In general, here you can handle it yourself. What can you handle? Yes, just, for example, on volume D:\ create two new folders: Program Files 2 and Program Files Old (or with any other names that you understand).

We will need the first folder to install all new programs there that we do not want to keep on the SSD, and the second folder for those programs that are currently installed on our computer and which we, again, do not want to see on the SSD in the future.

In general, now, without thinking too much, we brew some more tea and move on.

Step 3. Clean the system.
It is at this point, my friends, that we will be “stuck” for a long time. Since, in fact, at the time of moving within the framework of this article, my C:\ drive was 160 GB in size (of which a little less than 60 GB was free), so I had to pick up a broom and start a general uninstallation.

Let's start with something simple, namely CCleaner, which we use to clean all temporary files and other small things. If you don’t know how to do all this, then we have a special article for that: ““. On top of CCleaner, you can also go through the utilities of the Wise company (article).

The main thing here is not to overdo it and not to remove unnecessary things. Let us remember that the link to the material about the program was almost at the very beginning of the article.

Further more. Let's move along the path" Control Panel - Programs and Features"and it’s long + tedious, and also mercilessly three all the programs that we don’t really need (by these we mean, roughly speaking, those that you haven’t launched for about a month, that is, programs that are not essential). From my own experience I will say that Such software “garbage” can be found on almost any computer.

Naturally, even if we destroy all the garbage, we most likely will not reach the coveted 45 GB (and our goal, at least for the 60 GB SSD stated above, is just that, because it is impossible to completely fill the disk). But.. Here we will resort to our “secret” weapon, namely the wonderful SteamMover utility.

The program is completely free, does not require installation and is generally extremely easy to use (see screenshot below).

You can download this miracle of a programmer's thought, say, . Installation, I repeat, is not required - just unpack the downloaded archive and run the program from its folder.

As for use, on the left side, with three dots, we select where to transfer from, and on the right side, with three dots, we select where to transfer.

True, not everything can be tolerated harmlessly, and therefore it is not necessary. For example, it is better not to touch browsers and drivers, as well as all other programs to which plug-ins, extensions and other add-ons are connected. The same applies to, say, the office from small soft ones (Microsoft) and such heavyweights as antiviruses + firewalls. But even with these restrictions, if we try not to touch too much and avoid constipation, we can achieve good results.

In case all this was not enough for you, then there is something else that can and should be done, namely, move the contents of the desktop, the folders my documents, downloads and everything of that kind, in fact, to other folders on another drive.

I think that you can handle this procedure on your own, fortunately you don’t even need any specific software and everything can be done by hand, fortunately the desktop, downloads, documents, etc. are perfectly accessible and open to your intervention.

If you didn’t fit into the target, then you’ll have to delete something.. You can see better what it will be.

Ufff.. Now the longest point has been completed and I hope that everything went off without unnecessary troubles for everyone, because this is the stage where you can ruin the normal operation of the system, but.. It’s not in vain that we made a backup copy;)

Step 4. Copy or move the system volume.
It’s done, a little remains, namely: the long-awaited copying/moving of a disk volume.

After installation, which will also not be difficult for you, we launch "Acronis Disk Director 11 Home":

Initializing SSD. When we just connected our drive (with the computer turned off, of course), it is not yet ready for use and must first be initialized. There is nothing complicated here - just right-click and select “Initialization”, if this does not happen automatically;
Resizing the system volume. This is done very simply: select the disk and, in the corresponding menu on the left, select the desired item, and then we adjust our volume to the size of the SSD;
We move the volume. The same menu is on the left, but this time there is a different item. Everything is simple, but if it’s difficult, you can rely on the screenshots below, although you just need to choose where to move something;
We create a new volume from free space on the previously system disk or expand with its help, say, the same drive D:\.

Screenshots of the process:

That's all. Now we press the “Run” button in the upper left corner and, with patience, wait, because the process is quite long. If for some reason it gives an error, it means that you did something wrong when you cleaned the system and, most likely, you will have to roll back to a backup copy, and then repeat the process a little more carefully.

Step 5. Optimize the work SSD.
Wow it works (if it works ;))!

Do you feel how the system is loading faster? There will be more toli when we optimize the operation of our SSD. I won’t tell you how to do this, since there is already a wonderful article on this topic “” Read, do and enjoy the result.

Step 6. Install the necessary programs.

I think this point does not need any comments :)

Step 7. Take a backup copy of the working system.
Well then, dear friends. You have walked this difficult path with me (even if for some it may remain mental), and therefore all we have to do is consolidate the result by creating a backup copy of the system so that you can always deploy it in working order without unnecessary movements.. Well , but you already know how to do this, so..

Let's get to the afterword ;)

Afterword

To summarize, I would like to say that:

Yes, it was difficult for some;
Yes, it was tricky;
Yes, it was a long time and, perhaps, for many it was a painful series of trial and error.

But, whatever one may say, it was still useful.

After all, it was thanks to this experience that we, I hope, all understood that to take and install and configure something from scratch would most likely be much simpler and less wasteful in terms of nerves and time. On the other hand, we do not always look for easy and simple ways, because in the process we learn, gain irreplaceable experience and all that.

I really hope that this article was useful to you, at least as a kind of collection of “harmful and useful advice.”

That's probably all for now. Thank you for your attention and, as usual, if you have any questions, thoughts, additions, etc., then welcome to comment on this post.

PS: Thanks to a team member under the nickname Harry_Sol for the existence of this article. For now, we ask you not to judge strictly, because this is the first printed material for him, because we have more than all the videos on it, but look, we’ll make a writer out of him;)

Last week, the manager gave the go-ahead to upgrade the machine from HDD to SSD to all four of my colleagues, including me. My indignant letter about the dangers of long compilation and Resharper’s slowdowns helped on the developer’s nerves. I told him that starting a studio is not a trivial task, and compilation and subsequent restart of ASP.NET is generally extremely painful.

In principle, the configuration is good, Xeon W3503 with 4GB of memory, and the computer should, in theory, fly (not in games, of course, but in an office environment). But unfortunately, all this stuff is slowed down by the most common 250 gig Seagate. Therefore, having resolved the money issue, I began to choose a suitable SSD. To minimize downtime, I decided to simply clone my disk. Having looked at the current occupied space, I settled on a disk of 100GB or more. Corsair 115GB SSDs were purchased from a local store for $170 in the amount of 4 pieces and distributed to everyone. It would have been cheaper to buy it on newegg, but time restrictions suggested buying “today,” so I took what I had. At the same time, I bought additional memory up to 8 gigs.

So, as the most proactive person, I needed to transfer my system, as well as help my colleagues. For cloning I used Clonezilla. To manipulate partitions, I also downloaded . Both Clonezilla and Gparted need to be burned onto discs or flash drives, whichever is easier for you.

Since I have Win 7, the Internet recommends cloning the entire disk so that all hidden system partitions created by the Windows installer are copied. Here is the algorithm I followed:

Clean up the source disk so that the space occupied is less than the size of the SSD. For example, empty the recycle bin, delete temporary files, reduce the paging file.
Check the disk for fragmentation. I had 0%, and my colleague had 1% and had problems in the next step.
Reboot into Gparted, and reduce the size of the main partition to the size of an SSD or smaller. For example, I reduced it from 235GB to 100GB. My colleague managed to reduce it only to 106GB. The main thing is that it fits into the volume of the final disk.
Reboot into Windows and wait for the disk check (chkdsk) to finish, which will start automatically. Without it there will be problems in the next step.
Turn off your computer, connect the SSD, and boot into Clonezilla. There you need to select device-device mode, beginner mode, disk_to_local_disk, select the correct source disk and destination disk (from HDD to SSD). Give the go-ahead to all warnings and sit back and wait for 15-20 minutes (in the case of 100GB).
You can stop at this step, but I wanted to have a second disk in the system for backup and simply storing data. Therefore, we reboot into Windows. The old version will load, and the new disk will be disabled due to collisions.
Now you need to delete the boot record of the old disk. Or use bcdedit or download EasyBCD from Google. We make backup recordings just in case and demolish everything we have. When you exit, the program will warn you that the system will not boot next time. We don't need it.
We reboot the system, this time the system should boot from the new disk. Much faster.
Open Control Panel-Administrative Tools-Computer Management-Disk Management. Click on the old disk that is Offline and select Online. The new disk appears in the system. Here you can also correct the letters of the volumes (for example, move the old partition to the letter D).
There you can increase the partitions to the maximum. There is no need to reboot into GParted for this. You need to right-click on the partition and select Expand Volume.

The second colleague still has XP SP2 x64, and his disk is split into two, so I could not apply the above algorithm, because... I couldn't just copy the entire disk. In addition, the size of the partition with the axis was slightly less than one hundred gigabytes, so there was no need to reduce it. So for this option, here's what I did:

Turn off the computer, connect the SSD.
Enable, go to Control Panel-Administrative Tools-Computer Management-Disk management. Select a new disk, initialize it and create a new partition exactly the same size as the one being cloned. That is, if the cloned partition occupies 104,855,655,624 bytes, then the new partition must be the same size. Otherwise, I had strange glitches in the cloned partition (the indicated volumes in Explorer and Disk management were different) and Gparted complained about errors in NTFS, and chkdsk did not find anything.
Reboot into Clonezilla, select device-device mode, beginner mode, part_to_local_part mode and select the correct source and destination partitions (of the same size, but on different disks). Give the go-ahead to all warnings and sit back and wait for 15-20 minutes (in the case of 100GB).
Reboot into Clonezilla again, select the same options from the previous step, but at the partition selection stage, write off the names of the mounted disks (for example, sda for HDD, and sdb for SDD) and press Cancel until the “Enter shell command” menu appears (or something like that). Here you need to enter two magic commands:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=mbr1.img bs=446 count=1
sudo dd if=mbr1.img of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1
Where sda is your original HDD, and sdb is a clone of the SDD. These two commands (which in principle can be combined into one) will copy the MBR from the HDD to the SSD (since the MBR was not cloned in the previous step). Also, if you have a Win XP installation disk, you can run fixmbr which will do the same thing (write the correct mbr).
Reboot into Gparted and increase the volume of the new partition to the disk capacity (for example, I had an extra 10 gigabytes).
Reboot into the old Windows, go to Disk management, right-click on the new partition on the new disk and select Mark Partition as Active. This step can most likely be done from Clonezilla, but I don't know how.
In order not to mess around with boot.ini, you can preboot into the BIOS and remove the old disk from the list of boot options.

This is how I upgraded four computers in a few hours of trial and error. Of course, if you work this procedure to perfection, it won’t take so much time and so many steps. But experience, as they say, is priceless. :)

Was this upgrade worth it?

Here's a comparison in reading speeds:

And the sensations are indescribable at all, Windows starts instantly, projects are compiled twice as fast (noted), Resharper is not stupid, in short, beauty!