Move C Drive to Larger Disk Without Reinstalling Windows

• Scenario

• Why move C drive to larger disk?

• Best software to transfer C drive to a larger hard disk

• Easy steps to move C drive to a larger HDD or SSD

• Further study on getting a bigger C drive

• Summary

Scenario

 Hi, all. I got a new computer a few days ago. Its startup drive is a 250GB HDD and it has a 50GB system drive (C: drive). However, I have a 1TB SSD that i would reather use as my primary drive. So, i wonder if it is possible to move the current OS drive to my larger SSD (insteading of reinstalling the OS on the SSD) and use that as the startup drive. If possible, what’s the best method of transferring the C drive to larger disk without reinstalling everything.

Why move C drive to larger disk?

The C drive is usually the partition where the operating system is installed. However, it is more likely to get full quickly because it many kinds of files are writting into this partition continuously, such as Windows updates, Windows services (Paging file, Hibernation, Backup and Recycle Bin) or other Windows files (temporary, cache, logs).

When C drive is gettting full, Windows operating system will pop out a warning message on bottom right and ask you to turn on storage sense, and your system will run much slower, stuck and reboot unexpectedly or even crash. Therefore, more users want to move C drive to another larger hard disk to solve this issue as soon as possible.

Best software to transfer C drive to a larger hard disk

To move C drive to a larger hard disk, the best way is to use a professional OS migration tool, which can help get around the hassle of reinstalling Windows operating system and other personal programs installed on the C drive. Then you can try the powerful partition manager: AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

This softeware comes with the “Migrate OS to SSD Wizard”, which can migrate OS partition, and other OS related partitions to another hard disk (SSD/HDD) and boot from the destination disk without boot problems. 

Easy steps to move C drive to a larger HDD or SSD

Now, you can download the OS migration software and follow the steps to transfer Windows 10, 8, 7 drive to a larger hard disk.

Important:
✔Please make sure there is enough unallocated space on the destination larger hard disk. If there is not, you can back up important data and delete or shrink another partition to get more unallocated space.
✔Connect the larger disk to your computer and make sure it is recognized successfully.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click on “Migrate OS” under Clone list.

Step 2. Choose the unallocated space on the larger disk and click on “Next”.

Step 3. Now, you can resize the new C drive on the larger disk as you need or prefer.

Step 4. Click on “Apply” to commit the pending operation.

When it is done, the C drive will be moved to the destination disk. To boot from it, you can swap out the old startup disk with the larger disk. Or you can reboot your computer, enter BIOS settings, change boot order, make the destination disk as the first boot device and boot computer from it.

Further study on getting a bigger C drive

The above content is about how to move C drive to a larger hard disk so that you can get a bigger C drive to store a large amount of data. Apart from that, you can also own a larger C drive via adding more unused space on the current startup disk to the system partition. Namely, if there is lots of unused space on other partitions (like D: drive), you can transfer them to C drive (ex: make C drive bigger and D drive smaller).

To achieve this purpose, you can also use the AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, and its “Allocate Free Space” can help you move unused space from one drive to another drive within 3 steps, an quite easy and simple way to make C drive bigger.

Step 1. Open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Right-click the partition, which has lots of free space, and choose “Allocate Free Space”. Here we select D drive. 

Step 2. Then, you can decide how much free space to transfer to C drive.

Step 3. Click “Apply” to commit the pending operation.

Summary

After reading this article, you can learn how to move C drive to larger disk without reinstalling everything in Windows 10, 8, 7. Besides, you will also know how to make C drive bigger and another partition smaller to make the current startup disk partitioning structure more reasonable. Additionally, the recommended software is also able to convert MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, clone SSD/HDD/USB flash drive/SD card, convert primary drive to logical drive without data loss, etc. For Windows Server users, the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server is a great choice.