From HDD to SSD

[Devorak]

I have at the moment a full desktop tower with 3 HDD and what I want to do is replace the main drive that has the OS with an SSD.

 

Here's my question.

 

How do I or better yet, what do I use to transfer the data from one drive to another. And I'm not talking about the personal files because I have a 3 terabyte drive with that stuff. I'm referring to the OS and the programs.

What I'm looking for is a similar solution to what apples Migration Assistance.

I don't know if there is such a solution for Windows. Let me know.

Lastly, the windows 10 that I have installed on my computer was a free upgrade from Microsoft. I already has the licence registration key for the OS but, where do I download the OS again.

 

As you can tell I don't know where to start with this one. If you can provide me maybe a link to an already detailed tutorial on how to do this.

 

Thank you in advance to everyone that helps.

[TetraSky]

Windows 10 download:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

You don't need to enter any license during install if you already activated that computer before. Just select "I don't have a product license" to skip that step. It will auto activate when you connect to the internet.

 

You can "migrate" to another drive for free using a tool from your drive manufacturer, be it WD or Seagate, they both offer a free version of Acronis to do so(google it "wd acronis" for example). You can also use freely available backup & restore solutions like Veeam. You could also just put your personal data on one of your other drives, do a fresh install and then transfer back your data from that. It would actually be better to start fresh over doing a backup/restore.

[Droidbot]

iirc Samsung offers Acronis, they also have the best performing SATA and NVMe SSDs on the market atm

[Enderman]

You should not migrate windows unless you enjoy having all kinds of issues making your OS unusable and then needing to clean install a few months later.

Do a clean install, it is the proper way.

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

[Anghammarad]

Crucial has an Acronis key on every SSD I bought from them until now. 

 

It makes moving data quite easy. 

 

I even used it on a laptop once, pulled out the original hdd, put the ssd in, and the hdd into a usb case. Even then Acronis could do the moving.

[iBabySlapper]

I usually use AOMEI Partition wizard for this, if the SSD I buy for whatever system doesn't come with software.

[Yoinkerman]

i used acronis on a bootable usb to do this on my laptop and it worked pretty well

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

You should not migrate windows unless you enjoy having all kinds of issues making your OS unusable and then needing to clean install a few months later.

This is actually entirely false.  You can easily image one drive to another, either directly or imaging the drive to temporary media and writing the image to the new disk.

 

Though, what I find funny about people who believe that you can't clone one drive to another and then use it in the same system... I have to ask, what do those people think happens in enterprise?  When you have an office of fifty, one hundred, two hundred identical computers to setup, do they think that there's an entire squad of techs doing a manual install of Windows and other programs one by one, machine after machine?  Of course not, because that would be stupid.  They take one machine, configure it, test that configuration, image that machine, and then write that image to every other machine, only making the necessary changes for that machine's unique network details.  If it was a cause of problems, you'd have entire office building's melting down.  Even my office does exactly that.

 

OP: I've done this, using an external HDD dock with a clone function, multiple times.  I put the system drive in, the blank drive in, press 'Go' on the clone function, and the new drive is ready to rock.  Though obviously you'll have to take account that your new system drive may be smaller, you obviously can't image partitions from one drive to another where the target drive is smaller than the sources partitions.

[Enderman]

8 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

This is actually entirely false.

All you have to do is go to google, look at the hundreds of thousands of people who have windows problems after a clone, and then realize how wrong you are

[AshleyAshes]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

All you have to do is go to google, look at the hundreds of thousands of people who have windows problems after a clone, and then realize how wrong you are

No, I don't.  I've seen the threads.  You've made this argument before.  I get it, you believe in ghosts rather than rationally understanding how a computer system works.

Threads where someone's computer is wonky and reformatting it fixes it, proves only one thing:  That reinstalling windows fixes like 90% of all computer problems and, beautifully, you don't have to diagnose and find the cause of the problem.  It's like burning down the house and building a new one because the pipes clang in the the middle of the night.  To the new pipes clang?  Nope.  But you have no idea why the old ones did it either.

 

If you so firmly believe in it, make a rational explanation that by what mechanism cloning a drive would cause problems with windows.  Like, uhh, let's say you installed windows while the BIOS had that HDD set to IDE mode but now you AHCI?  Well you can't JUST switch to AHCI in the BIOS but now Window's won't boot. This is because it was installed assuming it wouldn't need an AHCI driver for boot.  It's now unable to boot itself.  ...That said, even that doesn't need a reformat, if you want to make the effort you can use the recovery tools and modify the registry and correct it.  But what I described is a problem with an actual mechanism behind it and a solution.

 

Please, explain to me by which mechanism cloning a windows HDD will 'break it'.  Don't say 'Just because' or 'I've seen others report the problem and they had to reformat the computer'.  Those aren't answers, that's just you believing in ghosts, or voodoo curses, or some other made up gobelygoop.  This is a computer, it's a machine, and if you can't explain how something will fail to operate and go with 'Just because' then you don't understand how that machine works.

[Enderman]

5 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

No, I don't.  I've seen the threads.  You've made this argument before.  I get it, you believe in ghosts rather than rationally understanding how a computer system works.

Threads where someone's computer is wonky and reformatting it fixes it, proves only one thing:  That reinstalling windows fixes like 90% of all computer problems and, beautifully, you don't have to diagnose and find the cause of the problem.  It's like burning down the house and building a new one because the pipes clang in the the middle of the night.  To the new pipes clang?  Nope.  But you have no idea why the old ones did it either.

 

If you so firmly believe in it, make a rational explanation that by what mechanism cloning a drive would cause problems with windows.  Like, uhh, let's say you installed windows while the BIOS had that HDD set to IDE mode but now you AHCI?  Well you can't JUST switch to AHCI in the BIOS but now Window's won't boot. This is because it was installed assuming it wouldn't need an AHCI driver for boot.  It's now unable to boot itself.  ...That said, even that doesn't need a reformat, if you want to make the effort you can use the recovery tools and modify the registry and correct it.  But what I described is a problem with an actual mechanism behind it and a solution.

 

Please, explain to me by which mechanism cloning a windows HDD will 'break it'.  Don't say 'Just because' or 'I've seen others report the problem and they had to reformat the computer'.  Those aren't answers, that's just you believing in ghosts, or voodoo curses, or some other made up gobelygoop.  This is a computer, it's a machine, and if you can't explain how something will fail to operate and go with 'Just because' then you don't understand how that machine works.

Western Digital said it is bad to clone HDDs to SSDs because windows can detect it as a HDD, and I would trust what they say more than you.

 

If you see how disgusting people's OSes can get with installing programs, uninstalling programs, updates, etc... you will understand why it is good for these people who say "I want to keep my programs and data" to do a clean install since they probably haven't done one in half a decade.

 

Also, the difference is that this is SOFTWARE and not a physical object like a house.

Clean installing is the best way to prevent issues (like all the thousands of problems that you see people having after cloning).

 

Using recovery tools, editing the registry, etc. is just patching up a broken pipe with tape.

If you actually want to FIX a problem, or AVOID it in the first place, stop being lazy and do a clean install.

sfc /scannow can only do so much.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Enderman said:

Western Digital said it is bad to clone HDDs to SSDs because windows can detect it as a HDD, and I would trust what they say more than you.

This is a previous problem with Windows, and again, I'm going to explain to you the actual mechanism and solution, where as you go with 'I just believe it because it's what I believe'.  It's TRIM support.  With Windows 7 particularly, if installed to an HDD to an SSD, Windows 7 would not enable SSD specific functions, namely TRIM.  This is not the end of the world however, it still runs, and the user can actually enable TRIM through the registry. Also, Windows 8 and Windows 10 will enable TRIM on their own.  I checked on my own Windows 10 machines I've cloned for.

 

But again, I can explain an actual function and then the solution.  Why can't you do the same?

 

6 minutes ago, Enderman said:

If you see how disgusting people's OSes can get with installing programs, uninstalling programs, updates, etc... you will understand why it is good for these people who say "I want to keep my programs and data" to do a clean install since they probably haven't done one in half a decade.

Ah see, now you're moving the goal post.  Instead of 'Cloning will break your computer' you're moving to 'Well, computers probably needed to be reformatted ANYWAY, so just do it'.  You can't explain why cloning a drive would cause any problems so you need to come up with alternative motivations to justify reformatting a computer.

 

9 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Also, the difference is that this is SOFTWARE and not a physical object like a house.

Clean installing is the best way to prevent issues (like all the thousands of problems that you see people having after cloning)

This is the best part.  It's not software.  It's data.  You aren't cloning software when you clone a drive or image it.  Even the image software isn't reading files, It's reading the data.  The partition tables and the entire partition tables are copied bit for bit.  The cloning software isn't reading files or the registry or your wallpapers, it's just making a bit for bit copy of the drive.  Cloning or imaging should absolutely not be confused with a file copy task.  The target drive's data is then identical to the data of the original drive, all of it's tables and partitions are exactly as they are and so is everything inside those partitions.  Source and target are a 1:1 copy of each other.  The software has no idea it moved.  Even the windows boot sequence will fire right up, it only cares about device ID for boot purposes.  No drive letters get reassigned.  Nothing is different as far as the software is concerned other than it had to recognize a new device for Device Manager.  That's it.

But again, you can't actually explain how any of that would break windows.  You keep defaulting to mystical answers because you have no rational answers.

[Enderman]

5 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

The target drive's data is then identical to the data of the original drive, all of it's tables and partitions are exactly as they are and so is everything inside those partitions.

If this was true, there wouldn't be hundreds of thousands of people who cloned and then had their OS stop working properly.

It sounds to me like you're just trying to convince yourself that it actually works every time, when there's clearly tons of evidence that it's bad.

 

Anyway, it's not my OS, so if OP wants to be lazy and just clone and deal with the issues in the future then he can do that if he wants.

At least you'll be there to help him when he comes to the forum a few months from now asking how to fix his windows

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Enderman said:

If this was true, there wouldn't be hundreds of thousands of people who cloned and then had their OS stop working properly.

It sounds to me like you're just trying to convince yourself that it actually works, when there's clearly tons of evidence that it's bad.

I'd like to point out that again, your response doesn't even make an attempt to explain by what rational mechanism that the problems you describe could cause.  You demonstrate only blind faith like a devout follower who can make no independent thought.  You also can't seem to explain the extensive use imaging in enterprise.  ...or how about new computer sales?  Like, for every pre-built computer and laptop that ships with an OS, do you believe that some tech spent 2hrs with each computer installing Windows and installing all that stupid bloatware those things ship with?  I just want to know if that's how you think it all works.

[Enderman]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

I'd like to point out that again, your response doesn't even make an attempt to explain by what rational mechanism that the problems you describe could cause.  You demonstrate only blind faith like a devout follower who can make no independent thought.  You also can't seem to explain the extensive use imaging in enterprise.  ...or how about new computer sales?  Like, for every pre-built computer and laptop that ships with an OS, do you believe that some tech spent 2hrs with each computer installing Windows and installing all that stupid bloatware those things ship with?  I just want to know if that's how you think it all works.

Well, maybe you haven't seen all the problems that people have with out-of-box systems due to the cloned OS? I certainly have.

 

In enterprise systems they actually do it properly, with remote OS installation that actually installs the OS from scratch on hundreds of PCs at a time, all managed by a control computer. This process also installs updates and programs.

 

Even when smaller companies clone drives, they are cloning a pretty barebones OS and a few programs, not 5 years of registry errors, residual files, and half-uninstalled programs. So it's a lot less likely to have an issue, but still not as elegant a solution as a clean install.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Enderman said:

Well, maybe you haven't seen all the problems that people have with out-of-box systems due to the cloned OS? I certainly have.

 

In enterprise systems they actually do it properly, with remote OS installation that actually installs the OS from scratch on hundreds of PCs at a time, all managed by a control computer. This process also installs updates and programs.

 

Even when smaller companies clone drives, they are cloning a pretty barebones OS and a few programs, not 5 years of registry errors, residual files, and half-uninstalled programs. So it's a lot less likely to have an issue, but still not as elegant a solution as a clean install.

My employer with around 300 visual effects workstations actually just uses USB drives.  They use a liveUSB and a second USB drive with the images on it and writes them and just quickly configures each machine for it's unique network ID and such and that's it.  I've even been charged with testing images before they are deployed to multiple computers.  There are no 'remote installations', everything is on the image from the get go.  All software and all drivers.  Just imaged right on.

 

And, again, you still have not explained by what mechanism a 1:1 image would cause problems with windows. You are now trying to argue 'OS and a few programs, not 5 years of registry errors, residual files, and half-uninstalled programs.' which is no longer you arguing that imaging/cloning causes problems, but the computers would have problemsbBefore hand, which is taking imaging/cloning out of the equation.  You can't even stick with your own argument, I mean, come on.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

My employer with around 300 visual effects workstations actually just uses USB drives.  They use a liveUSB and a second USB drive with the images on it and writes them and just quickly configures each machine for it's unique network ID and such and that's it.  I've even been charged with testing images before they are deployed to multiple computers.  There are no 'remote installations', everything is on the image from the get go.  All software and all drivers.  Just imaged right on.

 

And, again, you still have not explained by what mechanism a 1:1 image would cause problems with windows. You are now trying to argue 'OS and a few programs, not 5 years of registry errors, residual files, and half-uninstalled programs.' which is no longer you arguing that imaging/cloning causes problems, but the computers would have problemsbBefore hand, which is taking imaging/cloning out of the equation.  You can't even stick with your own argument, I mean, come on.

I've never had these issues myself because I always clean install.

I also don't know how to analyze a drive bit by bit to find out if a flipped bit caused the issues or something else.

 

The point is that after cloning, many people have issues, and the evidence on google backs it up.

Just because I don't know exactly why it happens doesn't make this proof invalid.

None of your rude comments are going to magically make all those forum posts of people having problems after cloning disappear, so maybe go read them and try to figure it out yourself.

I've seen enough of them over the past decade, so I always recommend people clean install so I don't need to see another.