Cloning an SSD - can I just clone the recovery partition and use that to restore OS on new drive?

[gunsmoked]

Hi! Looking for some advice here.

I'm upgrading a laptop SSD to a higher capacity SSD. The original SSD has the OS/data partition and also an OEM recovery partition. I am not interested in cloning the OS/Data partition as I want a fresh clean windows install. However, I want the OEM OS install, so I was wondering if I can just clone the recovery partition onto the new SSD and use that to restore/reinstall the OEM Windows on the new drive? Is that possible?

[Kid.Lazer]

Honestly, the OEM recovery (if it even works) will just install all the bloat your laptop probably came with originally. You'd be much better off installing Windows from a fresh ISO, in which case you wouldn't need to clone anything. Just pop in your new SSD and start from scratch.

[Pandur]

Either do what Kid.Lazer said and download a clean Windows iso from Microsoft. Or you can clone the entire drive and use the OEM recovery to wipe the rest of the partitions for a new install. If you want the old drivers and bloatware that comes with that.

[SupaKomputa]

no need, just clone and expand the main partition.

[Pandur]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

no need, just clone and expand the main partition.

You may want to take this into consideration. 

20 minutes ago, gunsmoked said:

I want a fresh clean windows install.

[Fasauceome]

40 minutes ago, gunsmoked said:

I want the OEM OS install

How come?

 

Even if that is what you want, why not just restore the drive to factory settings and close the whole thing?

[gunsmoked]

  

2 hours ago, Fasauceome said:

How come?

 

Even if that is what you want, why not just restore the drive to factory settings and close the whole thing?

Thanks for all the replies, everyone.

 

1.) why the oem recovery - laptop is a huawei matebook. has a fingerprint reader in the power button, so when i press on, it reads the fingerprint at power up and logs on to windows. i had some problems before when i just manually installed drivers, where the fingerprint was not passed on to windows login when windows loaded. so i thought the oem install with all the oem drivers (at factory) would be best...

 

2.) i might be misinformed with this, but I understood cloning copies over bit-by-bit, therefore including file fragments, deleted files etc. I wanted it fresh. However, what you're suggesting here is to factory reset ...I'm not sure if that automatically does a format and so the drive is clean from the "fragments"? That could work. 

[gunsmoked]

2 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

no need, just clone and expand the main partition.

as I mentioned in my previous post- i dont want to clone the file fragments, etc and windows registry full of stuff which has now been uninstalled

 

[Kilrah]

35 minutes ago, gunsmoked said:

  2.) i might be misinformed with this, but I understood cloning copies over bit-by-bit, therefore including file fragments, deleted files etc. I wanted it fresh. However, what you're suggesting here is to factory reset ...I'm not sure if that automatically does a format and so the drive is clean from the "fragments"? That could work. 

Depends on what you use, for example Macrium Reflect has "intelligent copy" mode, it won't copy any unused space. And yes the factory restore will just reapply the factory image as it was and wipe any remains. 

[gunsmoked]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Depends on what you use, for example Macrium Reflect has "intelligent copy" mode, it won't copy any unused space. And yes the factory restore will just reapply the factory image as it was and wipe any remains. 

thank you, I was not aware of this. 

 

By the way, if I decide to try the route of just doing a fresh windows iso install, not using the recovery, can I do so with the key from the OEM windows? Not sure if it's a digital license or just key activation with the oem windows from laptop manufacturer.

[Kilrah]

You never mentioned what the laptop was, but unless it's really old it won't even ask for a key, it'll see there's a license stored in the BIOS and automatically install the matching version. 

[gunsmoked]

Sorry. I mentioned in a subsequent post that it's a huawei matebook. Specifically, it's a huawei matebook 13, 2019 model. So I think this should cover what you said about a license in the BIOS.

12 hours ago, Kilrah said:

You never mentioned what the laptop was, but unless it's really old it won't even ask for a key, it'll see there's a license stored in the BIOS and automatically install the matching version. 

 

[wseaton]

On 5/18/2022 at 3:47 PM, gunsmoked said:

2.) i might be misinformed with this, but I understood cloning copies over bit-by-bit, therefore including file fragments, deleted files etc. I wanted it fresh. However, what you're suggesting here is to factory reset ...I'm not sure if that automatically does a format and so the drive is clean from the "fragments"? That could work. 

Windows based cloning tools like Macrium or even Windows Backup tools all use Volume Shadow Copy.

 

Volume Shadow copy is pretty clean and doesn't have the problem you mentioned.