Question about moving information (OS and Files) from drive to drive.

[RadioActiveLobster]

Here is what I want to do.

I currently have three hard drives in my system.

A 1TB drive that has my OS (Windows 7 64bit) and my programs installed on it

A 160 GB Drive that houses My Documents, My Music, My Pictures and some misc files/etc...

A 500 GB drive that I used specifically for STEAM and general storage.



I am building my new computer tmrw and here is what I plan to do. Transfer all of the info from the 500 GB drive to the 1TB drive. build my new computer, then installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 64 bit to the 500GB drive. (that will leave me with two drives having the same OS installed on them, this will only be temporary)

What I want to do then is boot the computer with all three drives in (boot off of the 500GB drive that has the new OS) and then xfer the files that I had originally moved from the 500GB to the 1TB back to the 500GB drive, then format the 1TB drive so it's clean, and then move the files back from the 500GB OS drive to the 1TB drive


Basically what I am trying to do is move my OS/Programs to the 500GB and my STEAM/Storage to the 1TB.

I want to do this mainly so I don't have to re-download 300+ GB of STEAM Games.

My question is this; Is there an easier way to do this? Perhaps partition the 1TB into two 500GB drives to temp hold the info, then wipe the old OS install (to prevent problems booting with two drives having the same OS installs) and then enlarging the partition back to the full 1TB?

Also, can it even be done or would it be best to just format both drives, install the OS/programs on the 500GB drive and then just do a fresh install of STEAM onto the 1TB drive (keep in mind this will require me re-downloading a lot of info). All of my important documents/files are on the 160GB drive so I don't have to worry about them

 

[InvisiBill]

I think it might be easiest if you use Steam to make backups of the games onto your 1TB. Reinstall on the 500GB, hook the 1TB up, and restore the backup files (from the 1TB) into the desired location on the 1TB. Once it's all restored, you can delete the backups.

You may want to check out http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036379775#post1036379775. It's aimed at being able to easily move programs on and off an SSD for space issues, but links would work just as well with two HDDs. Install Steam to C:\Program Files\Steam, and just have the Steam directory be a link to D:\Steam. Everything would get installed to "C:\Program Files\Steam\Game", but the files would actually end up on the second HDD. It doesn't really change how anything functions, it just allows you to use the default locations for ease of management.

 

[RadioActiveLobster]

I managed to figure it out and got it working fine. Mostly it was just and issue of there being stuff on the old OS drive that I wanted on the new OS drive but there wasn't enough space to temp move the stuff around.

I managed to get it all working