A Simple Guide: Use an SSD Only for Your OS

The growth of Solid State Drives (SSDs) has made it the primary choice for almost all requirements demanding high-speed performance. Installing the operating system on an SSD does make a noticeable difference in speed. Let's look at how you can choose to have only an SSD for your OS and what benefits it brings to you.

Why use an SSD for the OS only?

The reasons should be obvious: SSDs are many times faster than HDDs. If you have an older computer, you might have noticed that your HDD has degraded over time. In this case, your best bet would be to add an SSD to the system and install the OS on it.

A device that runs its operating system from an SSD will boot up faster and perform better overall. You can use the hard drive for storing data and content, such as files and folders. Of course, SSDs tend to be more expensive, so it might not make sense to get a device with a large SSD. However, you can invest in a 64 GB SSD to just install the operating system on.

How to Use an SSD as the Only Drive for Your Operating System

The option to use an SSD only for the operating system would involve installing a new SSD in your computer. There are several ways you can connect an SSD to your computer.

• You can install the SSD in a system alongside your existing hard drive.

Connect the SSD to your computer using a SATA-to-USB cable.

It can even connect to an external drive enclosure.

The exact way to connect an SSD to your computer will depend on your computer's setup.

Once done, the next step would be to migrate the operating system from HDD to SSD. This could be a bit tricky without a powerful partition manager software at your disposal. Tool Partition Master should be among the best options for achieving this purpose.

The variety of features and functions offered by Partition Master make it a one-stop solution for all your disk, drive, and partition management needs.

Support for almost all file systems, from NTFS to FAT32, should make it one of the most reliable partition managers ever. Support for splitting partitions would make it even better.

Notable features that make Partition Master a great choice include:

• The best choice for you to easily resize and move partition.

• Works on HDD, SSD, USB, memory cards, and SD cards.

• You can even use it to completely wipe data off any drive.

• Partition Master also lets you merge partitions more efficiently.

• Support for up to 8TB of storage is another impressive feature.

You can choose the free version or the professional edition of Partition Master according to your preference. The following are the steps to migrate the operating system to an SSD:

Note: If there is insufficient unallocated space on the target disk, migrating the operating system to an SSD or HDD will delete existing partitions and data on the target disk. Back up any important data to an external hard drive beforehand.

Step 1. From the left-hand menu, choose "Clone." Select "Migrate the operating system," then click "Next" to proceed.

Step 2. Select the target disk to which you want to clone. Click “Next”.

Step 3: After reading the warning, click “OK”. All data and partitions on the target disk will be deleted. Make sure you have backed up your important data. If not, do it now.

Step 4. Preview the target disk layout. You can also click on the Disk Layout option to customize the layout of the target disk as needed. Then, click "Start" to begin migrating the operating system to the new disk.

5. When you see the confirmation message asking whether you want to boot from the cloned disk, check the “Change the boot order to boot from the cloned disk”. Then, click the corresponding button as needed.

• Reboot Now: Reboots the computer immediately and starts the operating system from the new disk.
• Finish Later: Makes the change later.

Confirm cloning the system to the new disk     

How to Boot from an SSD

While moving your operating system to the SSD won't immediately make your computer boot faster, you'll need to tell your computer to boot from the SSD each time you restart. This process ensures that your device easily finds the operating system when it powers on.

Once your operating system is on the SSD, you can set it as the primary boot drive. There are a few ways to go about this.

Remove the old hard drive and set the SSD as the boot drive

This might be the simpler approach. Once the OS migration is complete, remove the old HDD and make the SSD the sole boot drive. This will work if your SSD is large enough to accommodate the OS and all your other data.

Configure the SSD as the boot drive

A better option is to use the SSD as the boot drive. This can be accomplished by entering your computer's BIOS settings and changing the order of the drives so that the SSD is first.

Step 1: Enter your computer's BIOS settings.

Step 2. Enter the Boot menu.

Step 3: Set the new SSD as your startup disk.

Step 4. Save the changes and restart your computer.

Conclusion

Well, an SSD will improve your experience quite a lot. Having the operating system boot from an SSD is great, which is why we recommend it if your device doesn't have one already.

The steps outlined in the discussion above should help you decide wisely on how to use the Partition Master tool to migrate your OS from HDD to SSD and how to use the SSD more effectively for just the OS.