swapping boot drive

[TheShadowA15]

okay so im building a new pc soon but i want to switch my boot drive from the old hard drive that is my boot right now to an m.2 without losing all the data or having to buy a new copy of windows.

 not sure if this is the right place to ask but is there any way to go about doing that.

[Fasauceome]

If you're getting a new motherboard, it may reject your current windows install. Many motherboards will refuse to boot to a drive that has a pre existing OS on it to prevent driver conflicts.

 

If you put your current hard drive and new M.2 into the motherboard, and the system boots to the hard drive, you can use a free program like Macrium Reflect to clone over your data.

[TheShadowA15]

1 minute ago, Fasauceome said:

If you're getting a new motherboard, it may reject your current windows install. Many motherboards will refuse to boot to a drive that has a pre existing OS on it to prevent driver conflicts.

 

If you put your current hard drive and new M.2 into the motherboard, and the system boots to the hard drive, you can use a free program like Macrium Reflect to clone over your data.

so the boot drive will have to stay as the hard drive unless i buy a new copy of windows?

 

[Kilrah]

Windows ties to the machine, not the hard drive.

 

Best is to copy the hard drive onto the m.2 on the old PC, then once you build the new you put the m.2 in there. If it works you're lucky, but it might not even work in which case you'd want to do a clean install. 

 

Then for Windows it depends on what license you currently have. 

[Fasauceome]

Just now, TheShadowA15 said:

so the boot drive will have to stay as the hard drive unless i buy a new copy of windows?

 

No you wouldn't have to buy a new copy. Cloning the drive typically moves the license over too, and you just reformat the hard drive to clear it.

 

Did you retain your windows license code? You can reuse it if you need to install windows fresh.

[TheShadowA15]

5 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

No you wouldn't have to buy a new copy. Cloning the drive typically moves the license over too, and you just reformat the hard drive to clear it.

 

Did you retain your windows license code? You can reuse it if you need to install windows fresh.

there is a sticker on my computer that i think is the windows license code says windows 7 pro oa has a (edit product key*) and some other stuff on it if cloning the drive works then thats all good but if it doesnt i just use that code and have windows thats good news thank you 

 

6 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Windows ties to the machine, not the hard drive.

 

Best is to copy the hard drive onto the m.2 on the old PC, then once you build the new you put the m.2 in there. If it works you're lucky, but it might not even work in which case you'd want to do a clean install. 

 

Then for Windows it depends on what license you currently have. 

old machine is a dell optiplex no way an m.2 is going anywhere near it 

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, TheShadowA15 said:

there is a sticker on my computer that i think is the windows license code says windows 7 pro oa has a license code and some other stuff on it if cloning the drive works then thats all good but if it doesnt i just use that code and have windows thats good news thank you 

Do you have a Microsoft account signed into windows on this machine? You can connect the windows key to the account and possibly pull it off the machine more conveniently

[TheShadowA15]

2 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Do you have a Microsoft account signed into windows on this machine? You can connect the windows key to the account and possibly pull it off the machine more conveniently

when i sign into microsoft account it shows the machine that i use tells me os edition/build serial number stuff like that is the windows key already connected to my account?

[Fasauceome]

22 minutes ago, TheShadowA15 said:

when i sign into microsoft account it shows the machine that i use tells me os edition/build serial number stuff like that is the windows key already connected to my account?

If you go to Settings, then Update & security, then Activation, you will be told if your license is linked or not. You should see "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account"

[TheShadowA15]

1 minute ago, Fasauceome said:

If you go to Settings, then Update & security, then Activation, you will be told if your license is linked or not. You should see "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account"

yep thats what it says. so itll be easy to move windows onto the m.2 i was worried itd be something difficult to do.