So the next birthday is approaching and my present from wife list has ssd at the top
I got a 1Tb Samsung evo 860 SATAIII as a m. 2 of the same size and manufacturer was beyond my budget and I need as much space atm as I can afford without compromising on quality.
My quandries at the moment are should I clone my windows or do a clean reinstall. Or go the refresh route and then clone to keep my files etc.
Will Windows 10 find and apply the drivers for the pc? Like all the stuff that ships on the mobo dvd.
Should I partition the new ssd to keep windows and games separately
Windows is currently on a 120gb ssd which is full and I have dcs on a 240gb ssd which has 40gb spare x plane 11 is on a striped array using 2x 150gb raptor hhd s and is also full. Add in Bos and all the DLC on another hhd you can see my need for fast storage
I wouldn’t bother partitioning, that would just mean you could hit the partition limits and be stuck again. Might as well have open access to the full capacity.
A fresh windows install is usually a good thing, but if you aren’t willing to do that then a tool to clone the drive and resize it up to fill the new SSD with one contiguous partition is a good plan. Some tools were mentioned in the thread about Beach’s new tower.
Windows 10 installs fast and has a big array of default drivers that actually work, unlike windows 7. You should be fine to install and have Ethernet or WiFi working such that you can download the vendor drivers to get the best use of the devices. Windows 7 always left you without a network driver, which was extremely annoying.
Now a third option if you want the performance of multiple disks would be to move the games onto the 1TB, clone+resize windows from the 120 to the 240, and then keep the 120 in as a open spare if you want.
Congrats on the upgrade!
Well done on the upgrade.
I would always do a fresh install. Windows ten still bloats and occasional re-installation would be my recommendation.
That said, and only if you can afford it. I would go for a nicely priced 120 gig SSD for the windows install and then stick in your 1TB for all your games. 120gig ssd’s are pretty cheap now, and that will be enough space for win 10 and a lot of bloat ware (its what I am using). At time of writing this with approx. 1.5 years of use I am only using 75% of the windows disc which also holds small programmes like TeamSpeak, voice attack etc and many more.
This way paretitioning is not needed and you have a sole drive dedicated to win 10 and a dedicated drive for games with independent read write.
As for drivers etc, can you not go to your mobo’s manufacturers site and download what you need from there. A lot of programmes that get shipped with your mobo are simply not needed.
Good luck on the sexy new drive.
Edit - I didn’t read your first post correctly. I can see that you already have windows on a 120 gig drive. Reinstalling windows that that directly will help a lot. Programmes like steam seam to bloat your main drive a lot. Screenshots, save game files, config files etc. Even if you remove the game, all that info is still stored (its all for the sake of “cloud computing” which means, keep track of everthing even if its deleted and we can say we store it on the “cloud”)
I go through steam and other folders regularly and you will be surprised at what gets stored. Even DCS (if you save tracks) stores all this on the main drive by default and after a long time playing DCS and online you will have lots of information just sitting there. Then add on top of that Tacview and that stores the same track in a different format on the same drive doubling up the space + screenshots etc. And that is just a few examples.
IMO 120 gig is more than enough for a windows install and expected bloatware to allow for a decent margin for read write capability. As long as you keep a good eye on it clear it out when you can.
So transferring DCS to the new drive @420 MB/sec between the Sandisk and the Samsung 
Nice