New
#1
Moving laptop drive to SSD - including backup and driver questions
Hello all,
I have an Acer laptop, Aspire V5-571. It has a 750GB standard SATA hard disk drive and I have just purchased a new 960GB SSD to replace it with.
I initially planned to clone the used data (320GB of the 750GB) to the new drive, but now I am thinking about doing a clean install of Windows 10. This laptop has never had a clean install in the 3 years I have had it - it shipped with Windows 8 and has been updated to 8.1 and then 10. So I am thinking a clean install is probably overdue, and probably best for the new SSD drive to get maximum performance. However, I had some questions:
- Do I need to do anything special with installing the new copy of Windows 10 with regards to UEFI or will the installer take care of that? I've never installed a new installation Windows on a UEFI machine before. I have the latest Windows 10 files on a bootable USB drive ready to install.
- I plan to just copy across my folders in my Home folder (C:\Users\Alex) to the new users folder on the new drive once Windows 10 is set up - but is there anything I need to consider backing up outside of these folders? Obviously C:\Windows\ and C:\Program Files are pretty pointless to back up, but is there anything else I need to consider? Is there a program I can run on the laptop in its current state to gather a list of information and installed programs that I can refer to once I have the new drive installed?
- Because I have never done a clean install on this laptop, and Windows has always just been updated over itself, what do I need to do with regards to drivers? Because this laptop model is not "officially supported" by Acer for Windows 10, so there are no drivers, but are things likely to work "out of the box"? Because it is running fine now. Is there any way I can save copies of all the currently installed drivers to my OneDrive just incase?
I think that I am doing the best option in doing a clean install and just copying my Documents, Music, Videos etc folders across, but if anyone can recommend any advantages in doing an image clone of the current drive, then do please let me know. I plan to keep the current 750GB drive "as is" rather than wipe it, it will be a handy (if out of date) backup to slot back into the laptop if ever I need to.
I appreciate any advice before I start this procedure :)
Many thanks