Moving/cloning a windows install

[aguade]

Hi everyone,

 

I recentrly upgraded my computer and when I was going to install W7, I found out the bad way it won't work on a NVMe drive without doing a whole mess of work. After pondering my options, I decided the best thing to to is copy/clone the installation from a spare sata SSD I have not yet used. Can one simply copy/paste a whole OS? or there are hidden things (boot tables and whatnot) that won't be transferred?

Are there any alternative methods? Ideally I would use what's described here, but sadly Western Digital hasn't released any drivers for their Black M.2 drives. I know W10 supports natively NVMe, but my license is for 7... installing 10 and using 7's license doesn't work, but ironically I could upgrade from 7 to 10 for free.

[Zyndo]

4 minutes ago, aguade said:

Snip

Easiest way to move an OS and all information from one drive to another, so far as I'm aware, is a System Image. there are certain caveats to using it, but largely speaking you click a button and it will copy everything no hassle or worries. Hakunamatata and all that. You should look into that if you're considering moving drives.

 

Also I've never bothered to check so I don't know why it would be a problem, but I see no reason you couldn't system image over to an NVMe drive if that is something you wanted.

[Saddy]

11 minutes ago, aguade said:

Hi everyone,

 

I recentrly upgraded my computer and when I was going to install W7, I found out the bad way it won't work on a NVMe drive without doing a whole mess of work. After pondering my options, I decided the best thing to to is copy/clone the installation from a spare sata SSD I have not yet used. Can one simply copy/paste a whole OS? or there are hidden things (boot tables and whatnot) that won't be transferred?

Are there any alternative methods? Ideally I would use what's described here, but sadly Western Digital hasn't released any drivers for their Black M.2 drives. I know W10 supports natively NVMe, but my license is for 7... installing 10 and using 7's license doesn't work, but ironically I could upgrade from 7 to 10 for free.

if you have a Samsung SSD you can use their data migration software.

[Doramius]

I've used Macrium mostly without issue, or have had very few problems when cloning over.  I think the biggest issue I ever had was some odd conflict where I didn't pay attention and the original drive was using legacy Boot, and the clone drive was being installed with UEFI initiated. 

[TheGlenlivet]

20 minutes ago, Saddy said:

if you have a Samsung SSD you can use their data migration software.

I do these at work all the time upgrading laptops to SSDs for my cheap ass company.  After about 30 of them I've never had one fail to work flawlessly. 

[aguade]

On 20/7/2017 at 11:05 PM, Doramius said:

I've used Macrium mostly without issue, or have had very few problems when cloning over.  I think the biggest issue I ever had was some odd conflict where I didn't pay attention and the original drive was using legacy Boot, and the clone drive was being installed with UEFI initiated. 

Worked perfectly! thanks!

I have a small problem though, apparently it just cloned EVERYTHING, size of partition included. Since the NVMe drive is 256 and the SSD was 250, there are 6 gb of unused space sitting there...

Is it possible to integrate it in the new partition?

[SkilledRebuilds]

17 minutes ago, aguade said:

Worked perfectly! thanks!

I have a small problem though, apparently it just cloned EVERYTHING, size of partition included. Since the NVMe drive is 256 and the SSD was 250, there are 6 gb of unused space sitting there...

Is it possible to integrate it in the new partition?

Windows Disk management might do that already....(extend a certain volume with unallocated space)

Most partition programs can do that merger/resizing as well.

[Doramius]

Apple will allow you to absorb the partition through Disk Utility.  Just be careful how you do it.

Windows will also integrate the unused portion.  Most OS's allow you to do this, nowadays.