Installing an SSD -- Moving T:ANE content?

epa

Angry Trainz Nerd
So I finally took the plunge and bought an SSD -- a 275 GB Crucial MX300 -- and I will be installing it in my PC shortly, alongside my current 1TB hard disk drive. I know I will need to reinstall Windows 10 on the new drive, as well as whatever programs I decided to install on it. I plan on putting T:ANE and its content on the SSD. I know I will need to reinstall T:ANE, but what's the best method of moving my content over? I'd rather not have TANE on the SSD if it's still trying to load content from the HDD.

Also, is there any program that can copy the OS, drivers, and select programs to the SSD, or would I be starting from scratch?

Thanks
Matt
 
So I finally took the plunge and bought an SSD -- a 275 GB Crucial MX300 -- and I will be installing it in my PC shortly, alongside my current 1TB hard disk drive. I know I will need to reinstall Windows 10 on the new drive, as well as whatever programs I decided to install on it. I plan on putting T:ANE and its content on the SSD. I know I will need to reinstall T:ANE, but what's the best method of moving my content over? I'd rather not have TANE on the SSD if it's still trying to load content from the HDD.

Also, is there any program that can copy the OS, drivers, and select programs to the SSD, or would I be starting from scratch?

Thanks
Matt

You can clone/copy your existing hard disk on to a new drive using such tools as Minitools Partition Manager.

http://www.minitool.com/

This will save you from having to reinstall your OS.

With T:ANE you can move the program to another drive, but you'll have to resetup things like shortcuts and stuff. With your data, you'll have to setup the install path to your new location. All of this is quite simple and easy to do. It's not a no-brainer, meaning you have to think about what you're doing but it's not difficult.
 
I've heard the migration only works if you have sufficient space on the new drive, and no picking and choosing what gets copied. In this case, my existing HDD is 1TB (with about 600 GB used), whereas the new SSD is 275GB (kind of a strange number for computer stuff). I wouldn't be able to do that without deleting a substantial amount of stuff. It would be nice if I could just copy the OS by itself.
Matt
 
You can clone/copy your existing hard disk on to a new drive using such tools as Minitools Partition Manager.

http://www.minitool.com/

This will save you from having to reinstall your OS.

That's what I did. Had no problems. After you clone to your new hard drive you may need to replace your desktop shortcuts or they might continue to be pointing to your old hard drive.
 
I've heard the migration only works if you have sufficient space on the new drive, and no picking and choosing what gets copied. In this case, my existing HDD is 1TB (with about 600 GB used), whereas the new SSD is 275GB (kind of a strange number for computer stuff). I wouldn't be able to do that without deleting a substantial amount of stuff. It would be nice if I could just copy the OS by itself.
Matt

Before you do anything, I highly recommend getting a backup drive too like one of those Desktop jobs from Seagate. They're inexpensive and come with gobs of Terabytes of space.

Don't bother to use their backup program and instead make a folder called Backups!!!, or something like that so you know not to delete it. I did that with a folder called DO NOT DELETE!!! and in there I have stuff like my downloads I want to keep, backed up documents, and other data. The folder is obvious so I don't do the inevitable stupid mouse click that's associated with a brain fart!

Anyway. Copy the stuff off like pictures, downloads, documents, music, etc. I'll bet this is where most of your drive space is anyway. T:ANE too is probably a big hunk of this data. Remember to grab that App Data/local/N3V Games folder too as that's your data.

Once that's done, and you have ensured your data you want to keep, including your Trainz stuff, delete the data. Gulp! Yup get rid of it since you have the backup. If you're not sure measure twice, or three times then make the cut.

Once you've done that, you'll find that you'll have plenty of room to fit the OS plus programs on to the SSD. My current 240GB, I know what you mean about drive size, has 72GB free.

It sounds a lot worse than it really is, but this is the only way around it unless you want to do a fresh install on the SSD of your OS plus other programs. That is unless of course there are other computer icky issues you need to clean up with a fresh install. A fresh Windows 10 install is pretty easy to do unlike the other OSs we've used, but all in all I can't reiterate enough how important it is to have a backup of everything before you start. As that will ensure you've got yourself covered. If I lived closer I'd visit and gladly help out.
 
At the moment, I'm running the SSD alongside the old HDD. I'm redownloading T:ANE as I type and I will copy my userdata folders over as soon as that's finished. I plan on making this a late night, copying stuff over. I don't have too much to backup, Trainz content, pictures, videos, docs... Everything else can be easily replaced, and likely put back on the old mechanical drive, but I have a couple 500 GB external drives if necessary.

Matt
 
I just had reinstalled my machines. I have yet to install T:ANE and Trainz 10 again (waiting for my internal DVD/Blue Ray drive to arrive first!) but i can say that that the SSD really kicked up performence with Windows 10. So far, it's ran quite fast, compared to windows 7, which is on the 128GB HDD.
 
Don't know the names offhand, but there are programs you can buy that allow you to choose which items to move to your SSD along with the OS.
 
The SSD package may even come with a utility disc which is bootable so it can do the copying block by block.

If you need a third-party program, check out Mini-Tool at https://www.minitool.com/

It's really easy to use and is very useful for disk management.
 
This thread suddenly took off again...
I've been sitting pretty with my SSD for two years now, and everything's going great with both T:ANE and TRS19. For what it's worth, I had no issues at all migrating my content.
But now I'm looking at a larger M.2 SSD to replace the 2.5"...

Matt
 
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