How To Swap Data On Two Different Hard Drives?

[Roasted Bunny]

So I want to swap over everything on the HDD’s, is there a program to do that?

I don’t mean cloning just swapping.

[Hexagon]

Copy/cut paste?

[rotNdude]

You'll need another drive.

[effnuke]

I got the same question. I want to move my program files ect onto my hdd (from my ssd) As my ssd is almost full now

[Chasseur Velites]

if you are talking about steam games you can right click on them go to properties local files then move instal folder.

[Washell]

Move/paste drive a to drive b while move/paste drive b to drive a, and then babysit the pause buttons on both copy windows while monitoring the free space on both drives. Also, if either of the drives is the one Windows is installed on, forget about it.

Originally posted by toby_twemlow:

I got the same question. I want to move my program files ect onto my hdd (from my ssd) As my ssd is almost full now

I wouldn't recommend this but:

You can do this with a symbolic link.
Move the whole "C:\Program Files" folder to "D:\Program Files" folder
Open Admin Command Prompt and cd:\C
Type: mklink /D "Program Files" "D:\Program Files

But that whole process needs to be done while you booted from a (linux) live CD or Thumbdrive, because you can't copy it properly while windows is using it. You also lose half the benefit of installing your OS on an SSD and if you it the tiniest bit wrong, you get to install windows all over again. You're better off looking for other things to move. Are my documents/pictures/downloads and such already moved off the SSD?

[Roasted Bunny]

Originally posted by Washell:

Move/paste drive a to drive b while move/paste drive b to drive a, and then babysit the pause buttons on both copy windows while monitoring the free space on both drives. Also, if either of the drives is the one Windows is installed on, forget about it.

Yeah, they both have Windows installed, but they’re both taking up less than 10GB each.

[Washell]

The size is irrelevant, too much pointers in the registry and other places to specific folders and such. You can copy it, but neither version will ever work again. If you need to swap them, you're looking at re-installation on both.

[Omega]

The only way of moving an OS is by cloning the drive.

[Roasted Bunny]

Originally posted by Omega:

The only way of moving an OS is by cloning the drive.

Could I clone the OS to 2 unused Hard Drives then clone it back onto the one I want?

[Washell]

Originally posted by Roasted Bunny:

Originally posted by Omega:

The only way of moving an OS is by cloning the drive.

Could I clone the OS to 2 unused Hard Drives then clone it back onto the one I want?

Yes.