My system has a Gigabyte Z87-HD3 motherboard and a Core i5-4570 CPU. It is running Windows 10 Home 64-bit with the anniversary update recently installed. My existing mechanical hard drive is divided into four partitions:
C:\ 60GB, boot drive, operating system &c, 6GB free (yes, needs attention)
D:\ 90GB, application software, 75GB free
E:\ 1.63TB, data, 690GB free
F:\ 43GB, scratch drive, 36GB free.
Instead of repartitioning my hard drive to provide more capacity for the C:\ partition I decided to install an SSD and take advantage of what I am sure would be greatly improved performance. I bought a 540s series of 480GB capacity. I hate the idea of reinstalling all my applications again (last time I did that it took days) so I would like to transfer partitions C: and D: with all their contents and settings to the SSD so that nothing requires reinstallation. I realise that there is little advantage in using multiple partitions in an SSD but setting it up as C: and D: may be the easiest way of carrying out the transfer so that all my applications will work immediately. The Windows page file resides on the scratch partition on the hard drive but that would be placed on the C: or D: partition on the SSD providing better speed for that purpose. After a successful transfer of files to the SSD I would stretch the E: partition on the mechanical hard drive to occupy the vacated capacity.
What is the best way for me to do all that? The downloaded data migration software (apparently a 30-day trial version of Acronis True Image) will not run, and gives the error message "Failed to load the snapshot manager library". I can't find a successful method of fixing that. In any case I think that version is intended for transferring a single partition although I would be happy to use it if it will do what I want. And if I can overcome the snapshot manager problem.