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Need to transfer data and OS; Should I buy Internal or External for that purpose

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I'm finally buying a new computer from (can I mention from where)? a retailer that I am sending my SSD and Internal. but before I do that, I have to put the OS and everything else on a drive (I was thinking 1 drive with 2 partitions,) *however* I have to be able to boot Windows 7 x64 Ultimate from that drive. It's an OEM edition of the OS.

Any Ideas as to how to get the OS and programs, which are on the SSD, and basically everything else A.K.A. "Data" is on the Secondary Internal. 

I know it doesn't need to be mentioned, but I have Acronis 2017 Next Gen, that I can use to facilitate that endeavor. Also, I have an external USB cable from ...that can fit 2.5 and 3.5 drives; that also could be put to use, if need be.

If you could advise on the type of drive I should buy for the transfer or (recover) in Acronispeak, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,

Crime of the Scene

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CotS, as always, please make full disk (& all partitions) backups of both your SSD and HDD drives before doing anything else.  These should be on an external backup drive ideally and you should check that all is good, i.e. mount / open / explore the backups and copy some files / folders to temporary locations.

One challenge that you have here is the fact that you say your Windows 7 OS is an OEM version - this is not transferable to different hardware - this is a Microsoft limitation for OEM versions of Windows that are activated for one specific hardware only.

To migrate your Windows OS to new hardware will also require the use of Acronis Universal Restore which is used to prepare the restore OS backup image (on the new hardware) by setting generic device drivers for the hardware that are found, so it will be difficult to do this until you have got the new hardware to work with.

Another issue that you need to be aware of is the need to match the type of disk controller mode used between the old and new hardware, i.e. if your old computer uses SATA in AHCI mode, then you should have the ability to use the same on the new hardware.  There may also be other considerations if you are moving from a computer with Legacy BIOS / MBR partitioning to one that uses UEFI and GPT partitioning - this can be handled by ATIH 2017 during the restore to the new hardware and is covered in the ATIH 2017 User Guide where it covers the various different permutations of modes and partitioning schemes that can be encountered.

The actual type of drive used for your backup image shouldn't really matter provided that it is large enough to store the backup images from your SSD and HDD drives.  If you know the make / model of your new computer, you could also put any device driver downloads from the manufacturers support website on the same drive, to point the Acronis Universal Restore program to if drivers are needed.  Note: this would normally be chipset and disk controller drivers that would be needed to allow the new computer to boot successfully.

I don't want to transfer my Win 7 OEM to the new machine the guys at (can I give them a shameless plug?) are building for me, I still want to keep all my files here, so I can format my SSD  and my Internal HDD. Obviously, I'm not going to select the "Format Drive" option, *before* I find a way to remove my OS and Apps, (on the SSD and everything else on the internal drive. 

I have an idea. What if I took my 4TB External drive a.k.a."my backup drive" and created (2) 200 GB partition with MiniTool. and placed all the contents of Secondary Internal in one partition, and the contents of the SSD (OS and apps) in the other? 

Would that work? Now that I think about it, I've done 3 "transfers" successfully. Maybe image files like .tib's don't count? re: the windows restrictions regarding OEM OS's?

CotS

CotS, sorry but I am a little confused by what you are wanting to do here?

Your new machine will have a new copy of Windows OS installed - fine.

What exactly do you want to do with your old SSD and Data HDD drives?

You cannot use ATIH (any version) to transfer your installed programs / applications to another computer.  

If you transfer your OS and data to two new partitions on your 4TB external drive, what then?  You cannot boot your OS from that external drive.

What I wound up doing was moving my data documents and such to a new partition I made on my 4 TB Back up drive, until I get my new computer.

Then I formatted my Western Digital 2 TB, since those contents were safely stored on another partition on the backup drive. 

Then I cloned the SSD to the WD 2 TB HDD, And lo and behold, it worked. 

Now the SSD is in a state of "Unallocated"  which I guess is good. I tried for all the world to get "partition magic" to secure erase it, but because it was hooked up to a usb cable, it wouldn't see it, no matter how hard I tried. 

Now, I can send the SSD back to the guys who will make the computer to include in the build. 

Did that help? 

CotS

CotS, OK, thanks for the clarification on the steps you have taken / are taking.  Glad to hear that the clone from the SSD to the WD 2TB HDD went well and all is working afterwards.

For the SSD, you should still be able to erase this even when connected via USB using such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard program, or you can use the Acronis Drive Cleaner tool that is found via the Tools page of ATIH 2017.

Thanks for that information. I chose to use the Acronis method. My question is, is it ok to "erase" an SSD for 12 hours? I think the program thinks it is an HDD.

CotS

If the SSD is to take 12 hours, that sounds like the erase is doing multiple passes etc which for SSD's should not be necessary.  If the SSD is such as a Samsung drive, then I would recommend using the Samsung Magician program to do any necessary preparation / cleanup.  If it is a different make, then check if the manufacturer provides their own utility for this purpose?