How to Combine/Consolidate to SSD OS & Programs Now on Different Partitions of Same HDD?

Jason:

If your operating system is installed on drive C: and your programs are installed on drive D:, then I know of no way of doing what you want to do. I suspect that you were thinking of restoring an image of drive C: to the new SSD, and then mounting the image of D: as a virtual drive to copy the contents of the program folders from the image file to the new SSD.

However, with most of today's programs you need to have run their installer to write all of the registry entries, register DLLs, etc. Right now each program on D: has written registry entries to C: referring to locations on D: and tracking down each of these would be very difficult and time-consuming and there would be no guarantee that it would work.

This is another example of why separating the operating system and its program files into different partitions is a bad idea.

Just do a clean install. In the end you'll be happy that you did.

Thank you for the quick and clear advice, Mark. I agree with you, bad idea (now, for SSDs at least) separating OS & programs. But I have kept things quite tidy always, clean (well, relatively, you know...Windows) and I have a lot of hobby programs (radio, photography,computers, etc.) that would take DAYS (if not WEEKS) to install AND precisely tune up again to my liking, all working perfectly right now. Thus...I would like to keep them the way they are but in one 'happily merged' unique partition on the upcoming SSD. If possible at all, I know. The problem is that the D: ATI/11 backup, if applied as usual, will wipe out the C: one already in place when I try to put it there. Plus the fact that the software will/might keep pointing to a non-existent now D: drive afterwards, etc. etc. I might try as an experiment to simply copy all the "Program Files" on D: to C: and try to open some programs and see if they are, with some luck, properly redirected to C: and...WORK! I doubt it. Any other thoughts, guys, besides pointing me to the clean slate again...yet?! Any magic program out there for 'my specific need'?! I don't have right now the (consuming) time that I know it will take to start from scratch. I might end up partitioning the SSD, again, ougghhh. No!!! ;-(

Are there any specific reasons you're not wanting to use two partitions on the SSD (besides the fact that you want only a single partition)? It seems to me that using two partitions would be much simpler.

I gave up trying to separate Windows and programs (including "user" folders/files) quite some time ago. It's not worth the hassle, in my opinion.

I just came across this Application Mover utility: http://www.funduc.com/app_mover.htm . I have to explore the possibility. Will backup C: & D:, then try to merge them on the HDD to see if/how it works. If it does, I'm set. Backup again the whole enchilada (C: + D: now combined) and use it to restore to the SDD this weekend. If not...I have the individual backups and can just restore them separately again to the HDD for the time being. For me, believe me, it's MUCH LESS work (time is golden) than the whole reinstall. By the way, I also came across this little partition gem from Easeus, in case anybody is interested (off topic, I know, forgive me): http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm. Thanks.

I just tried "Applications Mover" to place a small program (Mp3Tag) that was installed in that D: drive (as all my programs are, including Office 2007, Photoshop, etc.) into the C:\Program Files dir. A.M. took good care of it (after careful experimental 1st time-use here) and then it DELETED ALL THE PROG. ORIG. FILES on D:. Pretty neat. When I went back to the Desktop and clicked on the Mp3Tag icon (now on C:) IT WORKED AS BEFORE, PERFECTLY! Hmmm. Great. Their website warns that one might not get 'that lucky' w/ bigger, heavier software (such as the ones mentioned in parentheses above) but I will then only have to reinstall a few of them, if that 's the case; and not the O.S., plus no tweaking galore, etc. The facts that I have plenty of room for this 'merge' in C: and that I'm leaving that drive alone otherwise and I'm just bringing all what I want to from the D:\Program Files dir should help, facilitate the task. I can't do anymore today, I work late hours. Tomorrow or Thursday I will have to finish the preparation plans. The SSD is on its way, it left today from the other [East] coast.

MudCrab:

I want once and for all have the O.S. and the applications in one drive. WITHOUT HAVING TO REINSTALL EVERYTHING. When I put together this machine back in 2007 many people still advised to separate them, so I did. With a SSD you have to be more careful when partitioning, making sure that they are well aligned (separate subject), etc. Also, it's 'only' a 80Gb SSD, so I don't want to handicap it too much by splitting it unnecessarily since with SSD there is no performance gain from partitioning it. There are other reasons. Actually my major fear is that the SSD won't like the pre-installed True Image restore that I will use and causes problems for that. In which case, I'm afraid, I would have to think very seriously about the (dreaded) clean install, as Mark mentioned.

Last thing for tonight: Photoshop! and the Adobe Reader transferred w/o any problems with "Applications Mover", except only for the fact that I had to delete the task bar icon and link a new one to the new C: location. I tried transferring the whole D:\Program Files\Adobe dir to a same one on C:. One must remember to Open M.A. as an administrator to make sure that the software does its job properly. Thanks.

You might open regedit and do a "find" and look for any instances of d: or d:\Program

You may or may not find anything.