[Three Methods] How to: Move Files from SSD to HDD

The motivation of moving files from SSD to HDD

Due to its great performance, like high read-write speed, low-consumption, etc., SSD is gradually replacing HDD. Usually, the capacity of SSD isn’t large and makes it easy to fill up. If there happen to be a large HDD at handy, you may want to transfer files from SSD to HDD and then free up space on SSD.

Here is an example: “I have a 500GB SSD and it becomes almost full. Now, I want to transfer programs files from the SSD to my new 1TB HDD. And then I can use the apps on the HDD normally without reinstalling. Is here a way to do that?”

 Move files from SSD to HDD using 3 different ways

Here offer three different ways to transfer files from an SSD to an HDD, you can choose the one based on your own need.

✔ Way 1. Move personal files from SSD to HDD

If you want to transfer only small personal files, like photos and music files, you can use the Windows built-in tool “Paste and Copy”.

Step 1. Choose the files that you need to move from SSD, right-click them and choose “Copy” on the pop-up list.

Step 2. On the target HDD, find a location, right-click blank space and select “Paste”.

Notes:✎...

The files still exist on SSD after “Copy” and “Paste”; if you don’t want to keep the files on the SSD, you can delete them or use “Cut” and “Paste”.

When you use Copy/Cut and Paste to move program files to another drive, there are chances that the programs won’t work normally after moving. In this time, you can reinstall the apps or go to Way 2.

✔ Way 2. Move Program Files from SSD to HDD

As aforementioned, way 1 isn’t suitable to move Program Files. To move Programs Files from SSD to HDD in Windows 10, 8, 7, you can use Command Prompt to create a symbolic link.

Step 1. Move “Program Files” fodler to from partition C on SSD to HDD. Supposed that you move “C: \Program Files” folder to “F: \Program Files”.

Step 2. In the Search box, type “Command Prompt”, right-click it, and choose “Run as administrator”.

Step 3. In the pop-up window, run the two commands in order:

▪ mklink /F“Program Files”
▪ “F: Program Files”

After that, you can use C:\Programs Files as the default install path but all the installed files will be stored in F:\Program Files.  

If you need to transfer an individual or several apps from SSD to HDD rather than move the whole Program Files folder, you can use a third-party app mover.

✔ Way 3. Move all files and OS from SSD to HDD

Both way 1 and way 2 can’t help you to move OS from SSD to hard disk drive without boot failure, as some hidden file won’t be copied. Then, what should you do if you want to transfer all files including OS from SSD to HDD?

It’s highly recommended to use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. The great and powerful free hard drive cloning software allows you to transfer everything (files, apps, and OS) from one hard drive to another drive, and then you don’t need to reinstall OS and apps on the target disk. 

Now, download the software and see how to move all files from SSD to HDD.  

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, click "Clone" in the main interface and select "Clone Disk".

Step 2. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Select the destination disk to store the data on the source disk, and then click "Next".

Step 4. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window or change to “Sector to Sector clone”, and click the "Confirm" button to continue if there is no problem.

Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to improve the reading and writing speed of SSD if the target disk is an SSD drive.

Step 5. At last, click "Apply" and "Proceed" in the main interface to start cloning the hard drive.

★Tips:

As the operation involves the system, it needs to be performed under PreOS mode. Thus, you need to reboot your PC.