How to Transfer OS to SSD without Losing Everything on HDD

Why transfer OS from HDD to SSD?

Now, the SSD is more and more popular in computer users due to its significant advantages over traditional HDD, including the better resistance to shake, faster reading and writing speed, lower working noise, etc. And its price becomes more affordable than before. Therefore, many users are planning to use SSD to replace old HDD to get the better performance.

At the same time, some of them are planning to transfer OS from HDD to SSD, namely, install and run OS on the SSD drive while storing personal data on the old HDD. Then they can spend less money and get the faster running speed of their computer. However, they do not want to lose everything on the HDD and reinstall OS onto the SSD drive. So, how to transfer OS to SSD without losing everything on HDD? Keep reading, please!

 How to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD without losing data

Is there a way that you can migrate OS to SSD without losing data on the old disk? Definitely yes! Here we highly recommend you using AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. It is a quite versatile disk partition manager for Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista users, being able to migrate OS-related partitions to SSD without data loss. Besides, it supports aligning SSD partitions to optimize SSD performance.

If you want to move all contents (not only the OS) from HDD to SSD, you can try its “Disk Clone Wizard”, which can clone an entire disk to another one. Here we mainly show how to transfer OS to SSD without losing everything on HDD via the “Migrate OS to SSD” feature. You can download the free trial version and follow the guide below.

Before you do, please note:
① Connect the destination SSD drive to your computer and make sure it is detected successfully. You had better backup SSD beforehand because everything will be deleted after OS transfer.
② If the source HDD is MBR, and the target SSD drive is GPT, you have to change boot mode from Legacy to UEFI for a smooth boot afterward. The versa is also true. If you don’t want to make a switch, you can convert SSD to GPT or MBR to make it same as the source disk.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. To migrate OS to SSD, click “Migrate OS" from the "Clone" at the top side. It will lead you to the wizard of migrating OS to SSD. Click Next to move on.

Step 2. Then, you should select the SSD as the destination place to store the system files.

Step 3. Next, you can resize the system partition on the SSD.

Step 4. A note for how to boot from the SSD after migration will appear. After reading it, click "Finish".

Step 5. Do not forget to click ‘’Apply“ to submit all operations.

After migration, you can remove the HDD and install the SSD on your computer, and reboot your computer to check if the SSD is bootable. Or you can enter BIOS setup environment, and change boot order to boot computer from the cloned SSD.

Additional tips:
▸ If everything goes well on the solid-state drive, you can wipe the HDD to free disk space for new data storage.
▸ If the cloned SSD does not boot, you can refer to the solutions in the article “Cloned Hard Drive or SSD Won’t Boot - How to Fix?”.

Summary

So, now you should know how to transfer OS to SSD without losing everything on HDD. Apart from the OS migration from HDD to SSD without losing data, this partition manager can also help you to extend C drive without formatting, allocate free space from one drive to another, convert dynamic disk to basic disk without deleting volumes. If you want to transfer Windows Server from HDD to SSD without losing data, you can use the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.