Well...i'm testing my new production PC and I believe a 240GB SSD (OCZ Vector 180...WOW) could be not big enough. At this time has been installed the OS only (+ drivers, patches etc) and there are ~130 GB free. I'm planning to buy a 480GB SSD (the 2nd HD is a WD 2TB for software, VSTs and data)... but I hate thinking about to re-install WIN7 64-bit again. The solution is transfer the OS but I don't know which software is good enough.
Any suggestion?

 

Last edited: May 3, 2016

You can clone any drive (SSD, HDD) via Acronis True Image 2016. It works really well.

 

As dxdsyn said, True Image is the standard de facto for backup and restore system drives.

The new kid in the block is AOMEI Backupper. It's light and extremely easy.

You have to be careful and select the "different hardware option" when restoring. It can be called "Hardware Independent Restore" and several other names, all similar.

 

Thats insane. I have 50GB free on a samsung 120GB SSD that is my system disk. Its a fully updated win7 x64 thats been in use for about 2 years, so theres some other crap on it as well as just the OS.

How big have you got the pagefile, hibernation and sleep .sys set at?

Try emptying all the os temp folders and get rid of any driver folders left there as well.

 

Plus 1 for AOMEI Backupper

 

You are right. I forgot to install OCZ SSD Guru to optimize the device.

 

I used SpaceSniffer to find large amounts of data on my local drive, moved the files to an external drive and then created directory junctions to keep the program links intact.
So basically I would find large Program Files folders for specific applications (e.g Arturia) on my C:\, cut and paste them to my X:\ (external SSD), then use the following command in the command prompt (Run as Administrator):

mklink /D "C:\Program Files\Arturia" "X:\Program Files\Arturia"

Now, if I load an Arturia executable it still reads from the C:\ location but that location is actually a symbolic link directing to the X:\ where the files are actually stored.

I don't advise doing this for any Program Files\Common Files, User or AppData folders.

I had about 12 GB left on my local drive and was able to bring it back up to around 40 GB.
Just please be careful, don't move the entire Program Files directory, instead move individual Program folders within it one by one.
Trust me. I Iearned that the hard way.

HOW-TO CREATE SYMBOLIC LINKS

 

Last edited: May 3, 2016

Very interesting. In Unix using symbolic links is an everyday practice. But in Windows... well, it's not that I've little faith in Microsoft. I have none lol.

But only for this kind of things. Now that I think of it, they're still trying to make a useful command line, and they didn't succeed even in the MS DOS days, so... lol... why take chances?

 

There a comfy tool that let's you do the "mklink" stuff as an extension for explorer/TotalCommander etc.
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

As for system/user-relevant folders: some of these you can assign a new location through the "Properties"-dialog. There's a tab called "Path" (maybe "Location", no english OS here) where you can set the new location to. Folders you can relocate in that way are (amongst others): "My Documents", "My Music" (most of the "My etc"-stuff), "Contacts", "Searches" and so on.

 

Respect.

 

Yup... Right-Click to get folder properties > Location > specify where you want the directory to be placed > Move.

 

About that, it's one of the best practices ever. But I don't move the "my documents folder" outside the system partition because a lot of music soft stores relevant non-user data. And it can't break your set up if you make a system partition backup.
The rest, video, music etc yeah.

 

Keep the 240GB for the OS and plugins, use the 480GB for plugin data (Kontakt etc). At most a DAW and plugin .dlls will be another 20GB.

I use 5 drives 3x250GB Samsung SSDs and 2xWD 2TB HDDs
SSD1 OS, software, Plugins
SSD2 Omnisphere, Fave Kontakt, Nexus
SSD3 My Documents, My Music, etc all that crap, Current Project files.
HDD1 Other Kontakt, Archived projects, Windows Restore points for SSD1
HDD2 Samples, Loops, One-shots

The key is to read those plugin installers and not just press next.

If you do need to move a library use this tool:
http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

It moves folders then leaves like a forwarding address so your plugins can still find them.

 

Exactly! My 120GB Samsung 850 EVO has two OSes on it, plus all the relevant software, backups, portable music collection and some VSTs and there's still more than 70GB of free space.
As for software, HDClone Professional always did the cloning right for me. There are also bunch of advanced options like 4K alignment and an option to clone only portion of the disk.

 

Windows has a symlink feature since Vista and it's completely usable from Win 7 and up. You can check out https://sourceforge.net/projects/symlink-creator/ for an open-source GUI.

I find myself using it a lot for VST paths, Linking large sample libraries and directing synths to preset folders on another drive.