Drive Cloning Help!

[MattFromTheMidlands]

Budget (including currency): N/A

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Graphics Modelling

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

Hi there,

 

 

I am building a new PC for a relative. They currently have a HDD installed, and have some discontinued and licensed software on it. In the new PC, I am looking at using an NVME M.2 Drive, therefore, I was looking at cloning the HDD image onto the M.2 SSD (using an external enclosure), and then putting the M.2 in the new PC, and it should just work, right? Also, what would happen with regards to the Windows License when I boot on the new pc?

 

 

If anyone can provide any solution to how I could transfer this data over, that would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

[porina]

Macrium reflect trial version used to be a go-to for this use case but I think with recent changes that might not be an option any more. I've looked at Clonezilla as alternative but never used it. If the hardware is too different it might not boot, but Win10 and newer seems pretty good at sorting itself out.

 

Software may or may not work after a clone. It depends on how they implemented their copy protection. A change in hardware may break that.

 

Retail Windows licence should be transferable, but I've never done it. OEM versions are tied to hardware so you may need a new licence. If you need a new one I'd just get one of the suspiciously cheap keys from resellers.

[MattFromTheMidlands]

20 minutes ago, porina said:

Macrium reflect trial version used to be a go-to for this use case but I think with recent changes that might not be an option any more. I've looked at Clonezilla as alternative but never used it. If the hardware is too different it might not boot, but Win10 and newer seems pretty good at sorting itself out.

 

Software may or may not work after a clone. It depends on how they implemented their copy protection. A change in hardware may break that.

 

Retail Windows licence should be transferable, but I've never done it. OEM versions are tied to hardware so you may need a new licence. If you need a new one I'd just get one of the suspiciously cheap keys from resellers.

Thank you for your help!

[Tan3l6]

There should still free version of Macrium Reflect downloadable - https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/macrium_reflect_free_edition.html

It might offer "update" in some scheduled time, but easy to disable checking updates.

 

Edit: might not be free version anymore in Majorgeeks, have not tested myself their version.