Copying Windows

[RGBisKey]

Could anyone give me a detailed step by step guide on how to move windows from one drive to another. Or link me to an article or video that does the same. Thank you.

[Etrabon]

That might help: 

 

[TetraSky]

What do you want to do exactly?

You mention "reinstallation" in your title, but then mention "move from one drive to another"
These two things are completely different.

One involve installing Windows from the ISO that you get directly from Microsoft and restarting from scratch, drivers and all.

The other is called Cloning which doesn't require any "reinstall" to speak of, it basically copy the content of your drive, everything, and moves it to another.

 

So which one do you want to do?

[Constantin]

Cloning Windows OS will probably cause you different issues.

The best way is to back up your files and do a fresh install.

[RGBisKey]

12 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

What do you want to do exactly?

You mention "reinstallation" in your title, but then mention "move from one drive to another"
These two things are completely different.

One involve installing Windows from the ISO that you get directly from Microsoft and restarting from scratch, drivers and all.

The other is called Cloning which doesn't require any "reinstall" to speak of, it basically copy the content of your drive, everything, and moves it to another.

 

So which one do you want to do?

I want to clone windows from one drive to another. Sorry about the title confusion, I'll fix it now.

[NinJake]

I've used macrium reflect with success in the past. Granted, this was cloned from the same brand drive, same capacity and even same computers with the same motherboards/memory/processors in them.

[RGBisKey]

8 minutes ago, yaboistar said:

Macrium Reflect is my go-to. there are probably others but i found it, it worked and i've stuck with it because it hasn't caused me problems

I'm going to be moving it from an HDD to an SSD. Is this known to cause any problems?

[TetraSky]

37 minutes ago, RGBisKey said:

Is this known to cause any problems?

I want to say yes... But no.

There was a time, in the early days of SSDs where it was recommended to format instead of cloning due to the way various Windows settings wouldn't change themselves accordingly to account for the way SSDs work compared to HDDs. That isn't really an issue anymore.

 

 

These days, it's mostly people who want a fresh start that reinstall windows instead of just cloning. That's my personal go to.

It also saves on the unnecessary Writes from garbage you don't even use or remember that you have, on your hard drive. So might as well use that as an excuse to do a massive "clean up" by going through your hdd and only copying to the SSD after installing windows, the files you want to keep.

 

As for cloning, I'm partial to Acronis. It's likely that your SSD or HDD manufacturer gives you the option to download a free version of Acronis just for cloning it, too. (If you have a WD harddrive, but some different SSD maker than this list, the WD version will work too)

 

Gparted is also pretty nice as far as cloning and disk utilities goes.