move windows to ssd Moving Windows from HDD to NVMe SSD m.2

Akihikono · December 3, 2020

As most of us I have also bought upgrade parts for my pc on black friday.

I already have a working pc but I am planning to upgrade the following:

Motherboard
Cpu
Ram
Storage

I have windows on my HDD but I want to move my OS to my SSD m.2 (my old motherboard does not have a ssd m.2 slot)

What is the best way to move/clone my OS from my hdd to my new ssd m.2? What programs do I need and what do I need to keep an eye out for?

Or is it better to buy a new windows overal?

As this is my first post and first time moving and/or cloning, please be gentle. I have searched through old posts but I can't really find anything.

I sincerely thank you all in advance.

LIGISTX · December 3, 2020

20 minutes ago, Akihikono said:

As most of us I have also bought upgrade parts for my pc on black friday.

I already have a working pc but I am planning to upgrade the following:

Motherboard

Cpu

Ram

Storage

I have windows on my HDD but I want to move my OS to my SSD m.2 (my old motherboard does not have a ssd m.2 slot)

What is the best way to move/clone my OS from my hdd to my new ssd m.2? What programs do I need and what do I need to keep an eye out for?

Or is it better to buy a new windows overal?

As this is my first post and first time moving and/or cloning, please be gentle. I have searched through old posts but I can't really find anything.

I sincerely thank you all in advance.

Before you start the upgrade, log into windows with a Microsoft account and tie your windows license to your account. This will allow you to migrate to new hardware later since a new mobo usually “de-authorizes” your windows license.

You can build your system (upgrade everything), and use your old drive to boot. Once booted, it may say it’s no longer registered due to hardware changes, but since you tied the key to your account, you can follow the instructions for recovering your key after changing hardware. Once it’s all happy, you have 2 choices:

1) use macrium reflect to clone old drive to new ssd, use PC as normal.

2) use macrium reflect to clone SSD, and then use Windows 10’s built in “reset PC” option which will effectively reformat the machine so it’s like starting totally fresh. At this point you will have 1 “fresh” format, and still have your old data on the old drive. You can then copy your data (save games, pictures, music, docs, etc) to the SSD, you will need to redownload/install games and programs though.

Then in either case, once it’s all set up in the SSD, you can format your old drive and use it for mass storage