Swap OS from one drive to another

[Grabow]

Recently purchased a gaming laptop for Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal.

 

It came with a small 256GB nvme drive and has an open M.2 Slot as well as an open 2.5" drive bay.

 

I decided that I wanted a bigger storage and bought a 1TB nvme drive to place in the second empty slot.

 

Now thinking about it, I will most likely want to add more storage later on in a few months.

 

I don't want the primary drive to be a small 256GB storage option because I will migrate my desktop pc storage over to the laptop and only use the laptop from now on.

 

How can I migrate the data from the pre installed 256GB drive to the new 1TB drive without having to do a fresh install of Windows 10?

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, Grabow said:

Recently purchased a gaming laptop for Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal.

 

It came with a small 256GB nvme drive and has an open M.2 Slot as well as an open 2.5" drive bay.

 

I decided that I wanted a bigger storage and bought a 1TB nvme drive to place in the second empty slot.

 

Now thinking about it, I will most likely want to add more storage later on in a few months.

 

I don't want the primary drive to be a small 256GB storage option because I will migrate my desktop pc storage over to the laptop and only use the laptop from now on.

 

How can I migrate the data from the pre installed 256GB drive to the new 1TB drive without having to do a fresh install of Windows 10?

Norton GHOST 2003

Clonezilla

Acronis Tru(e)Image

 

[Grabow]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Norton GHOST 2003

Clonezilla

Acronis Tru(e)Image

 

Seems like Clonezilla is the only free option here?

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, Grabow said:

Seems like Clonezilla is the only free option here?

Probably.

I use GHOST and love it, absolutely fantastic program.

Have no experience with the others, but it shouldn't be that hard to use

[Grabow]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Probably.

I use GHOST and love it, absolutely fantastic program.

Have no experience with the others, but it shouldn't be that hard to use

If I wanted to do a fresh install of the OS on the new drive. Do you know what the process would look like if I had a thumb drive?

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Grabow said:

Do you know what the process would look like if I had a thumb drive?

If you mean the OS ISO is on the USB stick?

I use a program called "rufus" which will format the USB stick and take the windows 10 ISO to make it bootable.

Then you plug USB stick into laptop and tell it to boot from that.

Then follow instructions to complete the Win10 install.

 

I'd pull your smaller one, just to be safe, first.

If you mean something else, then I am unsure what you are asking about and will need you to clarify.

 

[Grabow]

Yeah, thats what I mean. I have never used a bootable usb to install windows. Only ever used disc media.