Moving Windows 11 to a New Drive

[AdvocateOfNyx]

So I currently have Windows 11 installed on my 6+ year old 256gb SATA SSD and recently got my first M.2 drive.  I figured for system stability and speed it'd be best to move my Windows install over to the M.2 drive and turn my SATA drive in to a games storage drive.  I'm also running into issues where programs that default to storing things on the C: drive can't because of limited storage, so I'd like to turn my M.2 SSD into my default C: drive.

 

Is there any way I can do this without causing issues or losing all of my installed programs?  I've seen that you can clone your install to an external hard drive and use windows recovery to move it, but I've also read this can stability cause issues.  I'm not sure how much of a big deal this is, but I don't want to cause any more stability concerns because I already have crashing issues (which I think are caused by my GPU but that's a separate issue).

 

Thanks for any advice!

[Radium_Angel]

Numerous cloning software exists. This is one of them

https://www.diskgenius.com/how-to/clone-hard-drive-to-smaller-ssd.php

 

I've used DG for other things, but not the cloning part. 

[Radium_Angel]

I've also used this directly with no issues

 

https://www.aomeitech.com/ab/standard.html

 

[GuiltySpark_]

Macrium Reflect Free also works well. 

 

Though this is the perfect time to do a fresh, clean install.

[AdvocateOfNyx]

22 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Macrium Reflect Free also works well. 

 

Though this is the perfect time to do a fresh, clean install.

I would have no issues with doing a clean install if I could keep the programs I have installed on my current drive there.  Unfortunately I don't believe this is possible, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

[AdvocateOfNyx]

38 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Numerous cloning software exists. This is one of them

https://www.diskgenius.com/how-to/clone-hard-drive-to-smaller-ssd.php

 

I've used DG for other things, but not the cloning part. 

Would you suggest using a third party tool like this or the windows built in cloning tool?  From what I understand, the third party tools are only required if you're moving from a bigger drive to a smaller drive, whereas I am moving from small to big.  It also says that it's for big to small moves on the banner of their site.  I have never attempted this before though, so I'm not really sure which would be preferred in my situation.

[Radium_Angel]

17 minutes ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

Would you suggest using a third party tool like this or the windows built in cloning tool?  From what I understand, the third party tools are only required if you're moving from a bigger drive to a smaller drive, whereas I am moving from small to big.  It also says that it's for big to small moves on the banner of their site.  I have never attempted this before though, so I'm not really sure which would be preferred in my situation.

The drive cloning software is just advertizing that it can move to drives of differing sizes, not that that is the only thing it can do. AS to using the built-in Windows cloning software I can't say, never used that before, but (EDIT, can't spell) I have used the Aomei one with no issues many times.

[GuiltySpark_]

12 minutes ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

I would have no issues with doing a clean install if I could keep the programs I have installed on my current drive there.  Unfortunately I don't believe this is possible, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

By definition to do a clean install you install a fresh copy of Windows on a fully wiped drive so no, you'd just have to reinstall programs. Obviously any important data you just backup beforehand on another storage medium (flash drive, external hard drive, etc..).

As for the built in cloning tool, like @Radium_Angel, i've never used it either but have used Macrium a number of time and it works.