Best way to transfer OS to SSD?

Question

I am running out of hard drive space due to installing too many games from various giveaways over the last two years.

I went to install a second hard drive, only to find that there is no bay for a second conventional hard drive and no place to put/mount the second drive even though there are two free SATA ports and an extra SATA power port. Strange.

There is a slot for an M2 drive, so I exchanged the 4tb drive for a 1tb m2 drive.

The existing drive is 1.5tb and has less than 50gb free.

However now I'm faced with the issue. The OS is on the OEM 1.5tb drive, but the SSD is much faster. What's the best way to transfer my copy of Windows 10 Pro to the new hard drive?

Most of the methods I looked up suggest making an image, but I don't have enough free space to do that, and there is no way to copy a 1.5tb image onto a 1tb drive.

If I install Windows 10 from scratch, would activation be an issue? I'd really rather not do that as I mentioned there are a lot of games that need to be downloaded and installed (Epic doesn't let you save an offline copy for something like this) that would probably put me over the 250gb/month bandwith limit my ISP has.

Any suggestions do do I need to bite the bullet and get out my Restore USB drive?

For that matter, will I have trouble with activation? I did not link my Microsoft account to my user account as I didn't want all the tracking and ads. Obviously this means I didn't link the product key/license to a Microsoft account either as I did NOT want a Microsoft account. Especially since those aren't as easy to integrate into my network with a legacy WinXP and Win7 computer on it. With all other computers since win95, I just use the same user account and they automatically work.

Answer 1

Ah, a feeling I understand only too well! I spent a lot of money (for me) upgrading to Cubase 11 only to find it needed Windows 10 to run. That went pear shaped and I need the new SSD which I could ill afford plus my own copy of W10 as the free download was causing serious issues.

That was 2 weeks ago and I'm still not up and running.

Not a happy bunny...

I can only suggest formatting your existing storage (Proper format, not the 'quick one' and reload from scratch if you have all the software available to do so. Obviously you need to save all your personal stuff first as everything will be wiped.

Good luck...

Answer 2

I can only suggest formatting your existing storage (Proper format, not the 'quick one' and reload from scratch if you have all the software available to do so. Obviously you need to save all your personal stuff first as everything will be wiped.

Good luck...

Why would it be wiped? Does the win10 installer wipe ALL drives, not just the one you are trying to install to?

I installed a brand new SSD, the conventional HD is still there.

I figured I could simply delete the \windows and \program files folders (and similar) once I had things installed on the new drive.

Answer 3

Most sorry to hear about the pink slip, there's a lot of that going around. I hope your DOS skills help you land a new job quickly.

It's my normal process to backup to an external HD, swap machine drives and then restore. This requires

A. an external drive.

B. the new drive being larger than existing.

You can try something like the link below that sidesteps a lot of that process and can migrate your OS: https://www.diskpart.com/windows-10/migrate-windows-10-to-ssd-0528.html#H2-4

This might accomplish most of what you want. However keep in mind that your OS will be on C: and your apps and data files will be on D:. Some of them may act up if they're expecting other helper files to be on C: when they're actually on D: Your registry will show the path for them in C: as far as I know.

Good luck and Happy New Year. I hope 2022 is better for you.