[Hez]

So I got a SSD for christmas, and I'm curious to what the best approach is to installing it. Basically, can I copy my current harddrive that has the OS into this new one, and just format the old one? Will having HDD's in the computer as well slow boot up? I figured I'd as before I get home and try to go at it.

[GerbilSoft]

The easiest approach is to use disk partitioning software, such as gparted (via Parted Magic), to copy all partitions from the HDD to the SSD. If your HDD is larger than the SSD, you may have to shrink the partitions first, then copy them and enlarge them to fill up the SSD.

For example, here's what I did for my brother's ThinkPad X230:

Original HDD (500 GB): 1.5 GiB boot partition, 463.5 GiB main partition
New SSD: 256 GB

• Resize main partition to ~24 GiB (used space was around 20 GiB)
  
• Copy both partitions to SSD.
  
• Enlarge main partition to fill rest of SSD.

Note that if your system has Windows Vista, 7, or *cough* 8, this will probably result in an unbootable configuration, since the boot manager won't recognize the SSD. You'll need to use a Windows recovery disk in order to "fix" the boot manager. See http://windows.micro...tem-repair-disc for more information.

[Vangar]

I just re-installed Windows onto the SSD. I couldn't tell you why, but it seems installing a fresh copy instead of moving a HDD copy seems to make a speed difference.

[Hivebrain]

When I got an SSD I redirected the paging file, temp folders and internet cache to run off a normal hard drive, in order to reduce wear. I also disabled memory dumps in the event of a crash (they're useless anyway).